Latest / Pastor John Piper's answers / Looking Back at 2023, Looking Ahead to 2024

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Looking Back at 2023, Looking Ahead to 2024 · Pastor John Piper's answers

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  Twenty twenty three ends for us here in ten days, Pastor John, and
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  to close out one year and to enter another, we like to set aside
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  some time to look back on God's grace to us over the past twelve months
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  and to look at what we have in store and what we have planned for
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  the next twelve months ahead. And that's our goal today in this update episode.
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  Obviously there are no guarantees for our future, but we do plan,
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  we prepare, we resolve, and we labor towards future goals. And we
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  do all that because so many of you listening right now are generously invested in
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  supporting our future endeavors. So it's good for us to talk about all of
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  this with you, our partners in the work, and with those of you
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  who may be listening and ready to become partners with us. This is for
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  you as well. And as we look back on twenty twenty three, start
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  with a personal update for us, Pastor John, just tell us how the
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  year was for you personally, and then dive into the labors that you were
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  able to accomplish. I have said many times, Tony, and I'm going
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  to say it again. God has been very kind to me in making me
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  a part of the ministry of Desiring God. I feel the same way about
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  being a part of Bethlehem College and Seminary. But Desiring God is where I
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  spend most of my time, and I don't take it for granted because not
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  every pastor who comes to the end of his pastoral work like me after thirty
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  three years at Bethlehem. Not every pastor can step into a ministry whose mission
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  he loves with all his heart. I love the mission of Desiring God.
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  It is not an overstatement to say it is. My life exists to move
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  people to live for the glory of God by helping them be satisfied in God
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  above all else, especially in their suffering, by communicating the truth and beauty
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  and worth of all God is for us in Christ, grounded in, governed
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  by, and saturated with the infallible scriptures. I love this mission, this
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  life, and I love the dozens of utterly devoted people to that mission at
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  Desiring God that I get to work with. So that's my dominant feeling as
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  I look back over the year. That's my update. In a nutshell,
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  it was a thrill, it really was to be with about forty of our
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  global partners in Amsterdam earlier this year, I spoke four times just to encourage
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  them in their partnership with us in this very mission. God has readied up
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  publishing ministries, online ministries around the world in dozens of different languages that share
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  our passion for this kind of mission. We don't own these ministries. We
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  serve them anybody who supports desiring God. What that means is they support a
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  growing global network of like minded ministries. There really were two major initiatives this
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  year that are well to me personally. They're just amazing. I'll tell you
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  why. One was the launching of the new podcast Light and Truth, five
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  twenty minute sermons each week. And what amazes me about this is the enormous
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  planning and work it takes to make something like that come into being and stay
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  in being. Yeah, but even more at the excellence of Dan Kruger's editing
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  and perfectly toned envelope around those messages each day. So thank you God and
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  thank you Dan. Light in Truth is remarkable for those reasons at least.
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  The other initiative this year was the twentieth anniversary of the publishing of Don't Waste
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  Your Life, And that's a book for people who don't know that I wrote
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  forty years ago. We celebrate that moment. We celebrated that moment by spearheading
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  the publishing of this edition in forty different languages. The ongoing global expansion of
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  the ministry of desiring God in that, for example, is what I mean
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  by being amazed. Of course, I spent most of my time in the
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  year on look at the book. That's what fills my day when anything else
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  is not filling it. I had this blitz in the summer of eight weeks
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  where I did nothing else but that. My goal, as many people know,
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  is to prepare these video episodes on all of Paul's letters. So I
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  finished First Corinthians during that lab blitz last summer, and I'm working now well
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  into Second Corinthians with only Romans to go, only Romans, only Romans to
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  go. So obviously I need our friends' prayers if I'm going to finish up
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  Second Corinthians, probably in twenty twenty four sometime, if God gives me life
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  and then we move into to Romans. Of course, this is another of
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  course, as Pastor John with you, Tony remains a happy rhythm of life.
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  I usually prepare on Tuesday, as we record on Wednesdays. It seems
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  to me that after ten years with you doing this, people never run out
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  of amazingly difficult, perplexing questions about Bible and life. So as long as
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  you and I have energy, they're there ready to ask their questions. And
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  I just think this podcast is as vital as it ever has been. Looking
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  into the new year, APJ is going to be more vital than ever,
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  I think, because you have written a book based on the distillation of as
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  Pastor John for ten years, which will be published and you can tell us
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  the details next year. And I know our listeners really want to know about
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  that book because it is remarkable, seen some of the endorsements which blow me
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  away. So would you take the rest of our time and tell us about
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  that book and anything else you see coming down the pike? Hon Or two.
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  The new book is titled Ask Pastor John seven hundred and fifty Bible Answers
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  to Life's most important questions. It's a big book, because you can imagine
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  from the title, and it launches on March fifth from Crossway, and people
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  hearing about it for the first time ask me what is it? Tony why
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  did you write a book about a podcast, especially when you know the whole
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  archive is transcribed, is online. It's all just a Google search away for
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  anyone who wants it. That's a great question. And for many years,
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  I don't know how many years, but for a long time, friends and
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  partners of ours donors would email me questions asking about some pressing question that they
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  have come upon in their life, or in their family, or in their
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  church, and asking me for an APGA episode that could answer that dilemma for
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  them, and I would go to the archive, gather all the relevant episodes
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  and respond with an email that was basically a digest of all the episodes in
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  the parts of episodes that I thought could help answer given challenge, all from
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  different angles. And I think it's easy to do a surge, find one
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  episode, click listen, and then that's it, and you miss the other
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  episodes in the other angles. So these little digests that I would write seem
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  to be useful for people who listen to the podcast regularly, people who are
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  familiar with the content. Otherwise, I think we underestimate just how hard it
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  can be to navigate a massive archive of over two hundred and twenty hours of
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  content and growing by the week. So I collected all those digests into one
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  document, and at some point I realized I could do this with the broader
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  archive as well. So I just set aside two years of my book writing
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  time. I identified seven hundred and fifty of the most popular episodes, the
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  ones that really seemed to resonate broadly with our audience, and I took those,
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  I summarized them, and organized them into one comprehensive guide, one huge
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  digest to help you find the episodes that you need when you need them,
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  and all of it became one big book that's significantly longer than Providence. Do
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  you go figure than Providence? Well, I love it. I wasn't trying
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  to win that comparison, but I do hope it's a fraction of as helpful
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  as Providence has proven to be, and from what I'm hearing it might be.
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  I mean, this is the first time I've ever sent out a book
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  for endorsements, and everyone I asked agreed and delivered a glowing endorsement before the
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  deadline came, and so that to me is a good indicator that people want
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  to get behind this project. Sinclaik Ferguson, a friend of ours, likened
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  the book to Richard Baxter's classic book, a massive book, a Christian directory.
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  If you're a reform nerd, you know what that book is a Christian
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  directory, So that kind of puts it in in the genre. And then
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  in his endorsement, Doctor Ferguson called the APJ book this quote one of those
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  rare contemporary books that can't be described as should be in every Christian home end
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  quote. My jaw dropped when I read that. I mean, that is
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  an amazing endorsement of the book, but even of your labors in the podcast
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  Pastro John as well for over a decade to a ringing endorsement of just the
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  scope of what we've built in this podcast. And Kevin de Young, another
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  friend of ours, said, quote, I can't imagine any Christian who wouldn't
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  be helped by and fascinated by the hundreds of topics covered in this amazing resource.
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  Quote again, he's talking about the podcast in general, which I've now
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  tried to wrap my arms around those two hundred and twenty hours of audio recordings
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  into one guide that you can easily thumb through and browse, you know,
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  scanning on paper, hundreds of popular episodes just reinforces the breadth and scope of
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  this podcasts and what we've done over our first decade. And then, of
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  course, our friend and avid APGA listener, Johnny Ericsontata, who's probably listening
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  right now. I'm sure so, Hello Johnny, Hey Loney, We love
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  you so much. Yes, amen, we do. She wrote quote.
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  As a podcast listener, I couldn't be more pleased. Thank you Tony for
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  compiling this encyclopedia quote. So if these endorsements are right, I have high
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  hopes that this book will serve present listeners to to help them benefit from the
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  archive in twenty twenty four. That I think is really my first prayer for
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  the book to help you who are listening to us right now. I want
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  to help you navigate the archive. But my second prayer for this book is
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  for future listeners to the podcast who are not listening right now and who haven't
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  even started listening to the podcast yet. Imagine that an there's an audience of
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  people who have never listened to APJ that will come online and listen to our
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  content in the future, and I'm I want to help them see the ground
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  that we've covered in the first ten years of the podcast so that they can
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  catch up. So those are my two prayers. I want this to be
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  a book you can buy and hand to someone who has never listened to APJ.
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  How powerful is that? I mean, that's incredible. And we'll talk
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  more about the book on March fifth, on the launch date. So wonderful
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  spring ahead. I'm grateful to God that he has made this work possible.
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  And if you're listening and you love the mission of desiring God as well,
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  and you know the power of our articles and sermons and books and podcasts,
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  podcasts like this one, ask Pastor John and the new one Light in Truth,
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  if you've been blessed by the content, would you take the next step
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  with us and become a monthly ministry partner. You can take that step with
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  a thirty dollars a month partnership right now at Desiring Good dot org forward slash
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  donate. That's Desiring Good dot org forward slash donate. Deeply appreciated. We're
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  back on Monday, Christmas Day, to meditate on Christ, to celebrate together
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  the four Marvels of Christmas. I'm your host, Sony Ranky, Pastor John,
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  and I will see you soon