Ask Pastor John

In Christ, the righteous deeds you do by faith are emphatically not “filthy rags.” Pastor John corrects a common and profound misunderstanding.

If God is sovereign over life and death, does it matter what risks we take? Pastor John considers the place of precautions beneath God’s providence.

Scripture gives us a category for addressing the devil, but our normal way of defeating him is by trusting the promises of God and killing our own sin.

How can we not lose heart over children who wander from Christ? Pastor John opens the parable of the prodigal son to offer encouragement after encouragement.

Can Christians ask God to teach the unrepentant hard lessons? Pastor John helps us pray against others’ sins without presuming to be God.

Should a Christian construction worker help to build a casino — or any other building that facilitates sin? Pastor John offers principles for the Christian conscience.

Staying married is not first about staying in love. It’s about keeping a covenant that reflects Jesus’s own faithfulness to his bride, the church.

Where should an unmarried pastor look for a wife? Pastor John encourages single men in ministry to take practical steps while trusting God’s providence.

What makes for a true friend, according to God’s word? Pastor John sketches the nature and importance of friendship across the Scriptures.

God looks throughout the earth, eager to work for those whose hearts are whole toward him. Pastor John unfolds glory from a favorite verse.

Will God condemn someone for being born into another religion? Pastor John responds to a former Muslim deeply worried about her loved ones.

“For his steadfast love endures forever” appears 26 times in Psalm 136. What might we learn from this psalm about the right kind of repetition in worship?

If you want more of your thoughts to become captive to Christ, open the Bible and pray, “Anything in my thinking that needs to be destroyed, destroy it.”

American citizens enjoy lavish blessings of common grace. Pastor John calls us to give thanks without giving away our far deeper allegiance to God’s special grace.

If joy in God is a gift from God, why does he also command us to rejoice? Pastor John takes us into a paradox that lies at the heart of the God-glorifying life.

The local church’s task of sending and sustaining long-term missionaries rests on several deep biblical assumptions. Pastor John shares five.

At the root of our sin is not a mind ignorant of God’s ways, but a darkened love, a hardened heart, and a will bent away from God’s ways.

In this fallen age, resurrection power does not keep us from pain. Instead, it brings life to others as we keep loving Jesus in our pain.

Bible reading can bring comfort, but Bible reading can also bring fear. How can we rightly embrace both the comfort of God’s promises and the fear of his warnings?

Paul says that the renewed mind discerns God’s good will “by testing.” What does that testing look like in the thousands of everyday decisions we make?

Our boredom in this world is meant to point us to another world — a world where the infinitely interesting God will banish boredom forever.

No matter how comfortable our friends and neighbors may seem, they are headed for hell unless they repent. So, what words might break through their comfort?

Why does Paul call Satan “the prince of the power of the air”? Pastor John explores the extent of Satan’s authority and Christ’s decisive victory.

If God has not chosen to save me, then why would he condemn me for not believing? Pastor John explains the kind of inability that does not remove responsibility.

Is Shia LaBeouf right to say that Jesus experienced “maximum joy” as he died? Pastor John considers the joy set before Christ and the horrors of the cross.