Latest / Pastor John Piper's answers / Make Your Life Count: Twelve Rules for Teens

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Make Your Life Count: Twelve Rules for Teens · Pastor John Piper's answers

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Hi. My name is Ashley. I'm a wife, mom to five kids,
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and I am their teacher. We all live in Phoenix, Arizona.
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You are listening to the ass Pastor John Podcast with John Piper. I want
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you to meet Ashley here in a moment, a ministry partner of ours,
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a precious ministry partner, and we want you to hear her story later in
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this episode. And this is a massive episode for us. You can pop
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the confetti. We have arrived at episode number two thousand on the ass Pastor
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John Podcast. Wow. And what a better way to celebrate than with a
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question about how to make our lives count. That's a major theme of your
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ministry, Pastor John, not wasting our lives. And today's question is from
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a teenager named Peyton. Parents and grandparents of teenagers, there's a heads up.
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This is one of those episodes you may want to pass along to the
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teens in your life. Here's the question, Pastor John. Hello, my
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name is Peyton and I'm fifteen years old. I have listened to your sermons
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and to this podcast for the past year and it has been truly very helpful
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in my Christian walk as a fifteen year old. How can I make a
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difference in the world as a Christian? How can I make my life count?
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Okay, here are my twelve rules for fifteen year olds, actually twelve
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rules for teenagers. Most of them are applicable to girls as well, if
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they just make a little slight twist. But this is a boy, so
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I'm thinking that way for him. Number one, Honor your father and mother.
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So these are ways to make your life count. Honor your father and
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mother. Never treat them with contempt or belittle them behind their back or around
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your friends. That is a mark that is honoring them, is a mark
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of maturity, and it is pleasing to the Lord if he's in sixty two.
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Number two, ransack your Bible every day and pray for its greatest impact
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in your life. Don't just read it, devour it. Dig into the
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way, into it the way a miser searches for gold and silver. Ask
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God every time you open your Bible, ask him show me wonderful things here,
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great things, life changing things. Savor it the way you savor your
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favorite food. When you stop reading, meditate on it day, and I
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take it with you, you will be like a tree planted by streams of
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water. You won't be like a leaf blown around by the wind. Proverbs
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two, Psalm one, Psalm one nineteen. Number three, don't focus on
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making good grades in school. Focus on really learning all you can and turning
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all of that learning into a man of character. The Bible clearly calls us
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to grow in grace in knowledge se Computer three eighteen. It never calls us
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to make good grades. Grades will take care of themselves if you really squeeze
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the most learning out of every course in high school that you can. Number
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four. If you get to choose your school, high school, or college,
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say, don't choose a school because of its popularity, or its library,
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or its sports teams, or its size or its parties. Choose it
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because of the wisdom of its faculty. Choose teachers, not courses. Choose
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teachers, not schools. Proverbs thirteen twenty. Whoever walks with the wise will
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become wise. Number five. Save dating girls for the time when marriage is
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a real option. Put it off till then. The concept of dating as
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a kind of mere recreation in our Western culture is not wise. Our attraction
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to the opposite sex built in by God. It's a good thing, is
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designed by God to lead to the great and wonderful satisfaction of marriage. That's
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what it's for. Do things with other boys, other girls in groups,
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and save the one on one dating till you're ready to seriously consider marriage.
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I dated for the first time with a pounding heart when I was twenty years
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old, and I married her. We're still married and happy fifty five years
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later. It was a good choice. Number six. This one comes from
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my father. He said, be so busy doing that, you don't have
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time to don't Now. That was his response to the fact that the Bible
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does, indeed say there are a lot of don'ts. There are a lot
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of things we should not do as teenagers or adults, some because they're just
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outright wrong, but many just because they're not helpful. They're weights, not
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just sins. They're like wearing an overcoat when you run a marathon. That's
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not against the rules, it's just stupid. They don't build our faith.
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These things we know. They don't build our faith. They don't keep our
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minds pure. So his solution was not to harp on all the things that
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wise Christians don't do, but instead fill your life with so many good and
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helpful things you don't have time for the questionable things. Be so busy doing
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that you don't have time to don't Galatians six' nine, second Thessalonians three
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thirteen verse Corinthians fifteen fifty eight. Number seven. What your hand finds to
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do, do it with all your might. If you want your life to
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count, you can't be half hearted. If it's worth doing, it's worth
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doing passionately. Glossians three twenty three. Whatever you do, work heartily,
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as for the Lord, and not for men. Romans twelve eleven. Do
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not be slothful in zeal. Our contemporary word for zeal is passion, be
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fervent. The literal translation is boiling. Be boiling in the spirit. Serve
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the Lord. So not lazy, but zealous. Are passionate, not lukewarm,
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but fervent or boiling in the spirit. Be done with half heartedness.
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Number eight. Don't fret over gifts you don't have, but take the few
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you do have and put them in the hands of Christ. Like the boy
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with the five loaves and two fish in his hands, he put them in
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the hands of Jesus. The hand should not say to the eye in the
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body, in your body, Your hands shouldn't say to your eye. Because
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I'm not an eye. I'm of no use to the body. That's one
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Corinthians twelve twenty one adapted. I regard this as one of the most important
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lessons I ever learned. As I went through school, I saw more and
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more clearly what I was not good at. If I had focused on that,
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oh my goodness, so I could listen, there's a long list of
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things I'm not good at. I've never made any sports teams for you,
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Sam, And I read so slow, and my memory is so poor,
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Oh my goodness, on and on my weaknesses go. If I had focused
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on that, I think I would have accomplished nothing. But I saw two
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or three things I could do, and I could do them as well as
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others, maybe even better. And I said, Lord, help me not
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to waste energy on bemoaning what I can't do, and help me to do
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what I can do with all my might. Take it, use it,
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make it count. Number nine, don't be a people pleaser, Paul Satting,
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Galatians one ten. Am I now seeking the approval of Man or of
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God? Am I trying to please Man? If I were still trying to
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please Man, I would not be a servant of Christ. Now that's not
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as simple as you might think, because there are other texts that say we
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should try to please others, like Romans fifteen two. Let each of us
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please his neighbor for his good, to build him up. So to please
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others to help them be stronger in faith is good. It's not about you.
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It's about trusting Christ, seeing Christ, knowing Christ. But to please
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others, to pump up our ego, or to avoid criticism of us,
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or to escape suffering or hardship, that's not good. So be mature enough
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to know how not to offend others and then be utterly indifferent to other people's
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praise. When your own ego or your own safety is at stake, do
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what's right and let the chips fall where they will. Two. Don't be
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defeated by failures. If you never fail at anything, you're not trying enough
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things. You haven't taken enough risks. If you never fail, we all
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begin as failures, all of us. That's what sin is. It's a
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failure to honor God as we ought. We all begin as f and the
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punishment is hell. And Paul says in Roman seven, even after he's converted,
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he stumbles in many ways doing what he does not want to do.
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But here is the glory of the Gospel of Christ. Right our lives are
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built on the Gospel. He covered our sins. He imputed righteousness to us
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that we don't natively have. Our acceptance with God is not earned. So
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we say with Paul and Philippians three thirteen, forgetting what lies behind. And
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he had lots of things he needed to forget. And we all have failures.
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I mean, like every day we don't measure up to the way we
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would like to talk to people or treat people. And if we are crushed
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by those things will never count. So don't look back like that forgetting what
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lies behind, he says, I press on to the goal for the upper
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tries of God. Don't be defeated by past failures. Number eleven. Make
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no provision for the flesh. That's Romans thirteen fourteen. Know the things and
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the times and the places that lure you to sin, and avoid them.
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You will not be used by God for anything great if you live in compromise
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with sin. And one crucial way to fight sin is to head it off
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at the past. Don't put yourself in any position where sin typically gets the
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upper hand. That may be sexual sin or temptation to greed or pride or
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anger, or whatever your typical temptation is. And finally, number twelve,
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don't live to stay alive, live to make much of Christ Acts twenty,
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Verse twenty four. I love this verse, Paul says, I do not
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count my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I
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may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus.
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The point of life is not to stay alive. It's to magnify the greatness
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of Jesus Philippians one twenty. My eager expectation and hope is that Christ would
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be magnified in my body, whether by life or by death. Seek to
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do these twelve things, and I promise you your life will count. Thank
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you, Pastor John, wonderful wisdom here. I'll be sharing this with my
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teenagers, as I'm sure many other listeners will be as well. And speaking
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of parents who make wise use of desiring God resources. At the start of
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this episode, you heard from one woman who is doing that very thing,
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Ashley. She lives in Phoenix and is with us right now. Ashley,
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thank you for spending a little time with us today on this episode. Your
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busy wife and mom, and you're also a Desiring God ministry partner supporting us
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to get us to this episode, to episode number two thousand today. This
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is a benchmark for us, one that I hope all of our ministry partners
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around the world will celebrate with us, because there are thousands of people who
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make this podcast happen like you, Ashley, So take a moment and tell
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us why are you a donor with us. Desiring God is a team of
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people that are passionate about what they do, and they bring a level of
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excellence combined with the Gospel, and they bring it to everybody. Moms,
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businessmen, teens, pastors, anybody and everybody that needs encouragement, needs direction,
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needs needs to hear from God, and they bring it in a way
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that is easy to chew in multiple formats. There's something for everybody there.
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Well, that's our aspiration for sure, to serve a lot of different people,
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like this episode today for teenagers. Very encouraging. Ashley, tell us
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more about your own story. How did you get into Desiring God resources.
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I started listening to Desiring God, well, I started listening to Piper's sermons
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when I was a young mom and seemed like I rarely was able to sit
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into a church service. So I started turning on his sermons and would listen
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while I nursed. And ten years later I realized that as God gave me
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more blessings, more children, I started to buy into the world's idea of
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the burden that they were, and I couldn't see past the cultural influence of
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I saw the other moms when I was going into Trader Joe's. They were
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going to business lunches, all dressed up, and I was discontent and discouraged
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and overwhelmed with the daily mundane tasks. So it didn't matter what the day
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held, no matter how well anything went, it was never good enough.
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I didn't have any joy. And then I started. My husband actually brought
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home some books that were from Desiring God and some little books. I think
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one of the Christmases, John Piper put out an Advent book, and I
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just would get up every morning and gobble it up. And I realized I
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was looking. I was desperate for joy and I didn't have. I had
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every reason to be happy. I had plenty of things, a happy family,
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a happy marriage, but I just wasn't content, and I realized that
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I was looking for it in all the wrong places. John Piper's books really
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pointed me towards happiness in God. And it was John Piper's Reformation Sunday sermon,
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and I'm like, oh, that's what Jesus did for me. I
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grew up a believer, but I didn't understand the impact why everybody was so
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crazy about Jesus like I didn't. I understood obeying the law. I rested
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on my own righteousness, and I finally saw that it's not me because I
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can't. And so that has freed me completely that in the sovereignty of God,
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which I didn't have that theology growing up. And so with all of
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those kids, you can't control them or the outcome of their life or anything.
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It's a false reality. So that has made me a grace filled mom,
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is giving me a different lease on life and has been completely life changing.
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So I have desiring God to thank for that. And because of that,
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Yeah, I'm like, if somebody else has that opportunity to have that
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realization, to experience to truly understand the Gospel, I absolutely want to give
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it to every young mom that I can, and the best way to do
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that, the fastest way is to help Ziring God do that. Because they
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can, they have such a further reach than I do. I would around
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my neighborhood and in my little shares of influence, but I absolutely want every
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mom to experience that. Yeah, amen, And by pooling our resources,
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we can reach the world and reach it together. So speak to someone who's
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listening and they're just now thinking of this. The cost of ministry, the
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high cost of ministry, you know, making podcasts and sermons and articles and
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books and then spreading those resources to moms and to dads and to singles and
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to teenagers all around the globe. It's not cheap. It's expensive. It
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costs a lot of money. So what would you say to a listener who's
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maybe now just for the first time, thinking, oh, yeah, I
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want to take this next step, join Ashley and become a ministry partner with
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Desiring God. What would you tell them? I would encourage them wholeheartedly to
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give to the work God is doing through Desiring God. As they have freely
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been given freely, they can give, and I believe that they will be
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truly blessed by blessing somebody else. The team of Desiring God is some of
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the happiest, most authentic, humble. I feel like when I am with
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the Desiring God team, I see Jesus in the flesh and that is inspiring
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to me. So I am super grateful for what you guys do. I'm
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privileged to be a part of it. Well, we're honored to have you
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as a ministry partner, Ashley, Thank you so much. You bet you
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too can partner with us in spreading our content. Pass it along. Maybe
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you know a teen in your life who needs to hear this episode, share
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it with them, get it to them, and share all of our articles
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and books as well as part of what it means to be a partner of
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ours, to help us spread our gospel centered resources to the people that you
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know. And there are many people in your life we will not reach with
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our resources if you don't share them, so please do that. And then,
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of course you can support this podcast financially as well as we pool our
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influence together. If you are so led, consider giving a monthly gift of
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thirty dollars to set it up. Go to Desiring Good dot org forward slash
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donate that's desiring good dot org forward slash donate. Really appreciate it. I'm
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Tony Ranky. We'll see you on Monday.