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You Will Know the Truth and the Truth Will Set You Free

My aim in this message is that you would experience Jesus, the sovereign, risen, living Lord of the universe, as the source and content of real freedom in your life.
For this to happen, we need two things: We need God's liberating truth and we need God's liberating grace. Which means I need to preach God's word, and pray for God's power.
So let's read the Bible passage that I will speak from, and then I will pray. John 8:30–36:
As he was saying these things, many believed in him. So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, "If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." They answered him, "We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say, 'You will become free'?" Jesus answered them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.
Lord, open our eyes to your liberating truth—to yourself—and powerfully grant us to be set free from our bondage to sin. In Jesus' name, Amen.

We All Want to Be Free


I take it for a certainty that everyone in this room wants to be free in the deepest, fullest sense. If the opposite is bondage and slavery, no one here wants that. You may be enslaved to some habits that are very pleasurable, and in that sense love your slavery. But when you step back from the pleasures and consider happiness without that slavery, you would like to be done with bondage. You would like to be happy in freedom, not a slave to pleasant addictions. We all want to be free.
And in verse 36 of John 8, Jesus says, "So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed." That is what we are after. "Free indeed." Really free. Freedom in its deepest and fullest meaning. Jesus offers us that this morning. This is Easter. The celebration of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. He is alive. He is not mere memory. A mere historical figure like Caesar or Shakespeare or John Kennedy. He is back from the dead with a new glorious body. He is alive and reigning as the king of the universe, and he is making this offer of real freedom to all of us today.

The Jesus of History as the Jesus of Our Faith

I know I am taking a lot for granted when I say that. So let me back up. We Christians believe that what the 27 books of the New Testament record about Jesus is true. These books uniformly teach or assume that Jesus lived in history, died as a substitute for sinners, and rose again on the third day, and that he ascended to heaven, and rules the world as the very God of very God (as the old creed puts it).
These 27 books are shot through with references to the physical resurrection of Jesus from the dead. For example, here in the Gospel of John (20:27–28), Jesus appears to Thomas, one of his disciples who had refused to believe that Jesus was raised, and says, "Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe." And Thomas answered him, "My Lord and my God!"

A Thousand Miles from Myth

These accounts of what happened in the life of Jesus are a thousand miles removed from myth—say like Greek or Roman mythology shrouded in a distant past that does not connect with real history. The New Testament books are talking about real history. Pilate, the Roman governor, Herod the king from Galilee, Caiaphas, the High priest. These are not mythical figures. These people are known from history outside the Bible.
The accounts of the New Testament (the 27 books) were all written while eyewitnesses were still alive. Paul's letters were written 15 to 30 years after the death of Jesus. In one of them, he mentions the fact that 500 people had seen the risen Jesus at one time and that most of them were still alive (1 Corinthians 15:6). Most of the books, maybe all of them were written before AD 70, forty years after the death of Jesus. And even if John was written by the aged apostle around AD 90, the time is short.

Real History—Remembered and Witnessed

Think of it. If we were the writers of the New Testament here in 2011, for some of us Jesus would have lived in the late 1980s, for others the 1970s and perhaps for one, in the 1950s. This is not mythology. This is history. Remembered history. Eyewitness history.
And add to this that the enemies of Christianity would have loved nothing better than to be able to wheel the body of Jesus into Jerusalem in a wheelbarrow, and prove that it was all a hoax, but they couldn't. The tomb was empty, and there was no dead body. The disciples stole the corpse, and created the story of the resurrection? Really? The thought that these fearful disciples who abandoned Jesus for fear of their lives, who said, "We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel" (Luke 24:21)—the thought they should suddenly agree among themselves to create a hoax, and then die for it, is ludicrous.

Not Wackos but Witnesses

No these apostles of Jesus were not wacko; they were witnesses. What we have in the New Testament is not mythology, but the Jesus as eyewitnesses remembered him. Richard Bauckham, former professor of New Testament at the university of St. Andrews, put it this way in his book Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony: "The Jesus the Gospels portray is Jesus as these eyewitnesses portrayed him, the Jesus of testimony" (p. 472). That is the conclusion of almost 500 pages of painstaking historical study.
One of those witnesses—the one we are studying, John—Bauckham devotes another whole book to, The Testimony of the Beloved Disciple: Narrative, History, and Theology in the Gospel of John. And the point of the book is that the author is an eyewitness and, "He intends to be faithful to the history" (p. 27).

Resurrection, Historically Speaking

The point of all this is simply to say that when we Christians say Jesus is risen from the dead, we are not speaking mythically, and we are not speaking blindly. We are not speaking merely spiritually or emotionally. We are speaking historically. In the end, he has to win your trust. And my point is that the Jesus of history is not as inaccessible as you might have thought. So let him speak to you.

A Walloping Statement: Everyone Enslaved to Sin

Let him speak to you about freedom. In John 8:32, he says, "You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." The people answered him, just as some of us might: We are already free! They say in verse 33, "We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say, 'You will become free'?" They are focusing on some aspects of freedom, but not the one Jesus has in mind.
So Jesus clarifies in verse 34, "Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin." Now that is an absolutely walloping statement. We need several weeks just to unpack the foundations and implications of it. But we don't have time. We will just say it, and let his word stand as one who knows us better than we know ourselves. Everyone sins. Therefore, Jesus is saying that everyone is a slave of sin. This means that sin is not just a bad act, but a power underneath in our hearts that makes us do back acts. We sin because we are sinners.
So our slavery is slavery to this power inside of us. There may be kinds of freedom that we can make for ourselves, but not this one. That's Jesus' point. This slavery is too deep. And all of us have it. Jesus alone can set us free. So he says in verse 36, "So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed."

Sin Enslaves in 2 Ways

So sin enslaves in two ways. And, therefore, freedom comes in two forms. First, sin enslaves us by producing compelling desires. Sin enslaves by making anything look more desirable than Jesus. That's what sin is: desiring something above Jesus and then acting on it.
And the second way sin enslaves is that it eventually damns us. Unless something intervenes, it leads to hell. I call this slavery because someone might say, "I'm fine with desiring things more than Jesus. Sounds free to me." But you wouldn't say that if you saw clearly that the end of that road was destruction.

Freedom from Sin's Domination and Damnation

Jesus alone can free us from these two kinds of slavery: the domination and damnation of sin. He frees us from the damnation of sin by becoming a damnation for us. "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us" (Galatians 3:13). And he frees us from the domination of sin by changing our nature at the root through the new birth. And the essence of it is that he gives us eyes to see that our Savior is more to be desired than anything in the world.
When our sins are forgiven, and God's wrath is taken away, and we see Jesus as a greater Treasure than all the world, we are freed from both the damnation and the domination of sin. We are free indeed. That's what Jesus is offering you today.

What Full Freedom Is

Now let me step back relate this kind of liberation to the freedom that we really long for. It may be that you hear all this and still say, "I'm already free. It's you Christians who are all tied up in moral knots. I just do what I feel like doing. And I'm thankful for a country where I can do it. And that's all the freedom I care about."
So let's end this message by making as clear as we can what full freedom is. "Free indeed," Jesus says. That's what he alone can give. So what other kinds of freedom are there? What freedom comes short of "free indeed"?

4 Kinds of Freedom

There are at least four kinds of freedom. And each one adds a crucial dimension of freedom to the last until we get to the full freedom—"free indeed." Let me try to sum up these four kinds of freedom in one definition of full and complete freedom: You are fully free—completely free, free indeed—when you have the desire, the ability, and the opportunity to do what will make you happy in a thousand years. Or we could say, You are fully free when you have the desire, the ability, and the opportunity to do what will leave you no regrets forever.
  • If you don't have the desire to do a thing, you are not fully free to do it. Oh, you may muster the will power to do what you don't want to do, but nobody calls that full freedom. It's not the way we want to live. There is a constraint and pressure on us that we don't want.
  • And if you have the desire to do something, but no ability to do it, you are not free to do it.
  • And if you have the desire and the ability to do something, but no opportunity to do it, you are not free to do it.
  • And if you have the desire to do something, and the ability to do it, and the opportunity to do it, but it destroys you in the end, you are not fully free—not free indeed.
To be fully free, we must have the desire, the ability, and the opportunity to do what will make us happy forever. No regrets. And only Jesus, the Son of God who died and rose for us, can make that possible. If the Son shall set you free, you shall be free indeed. To be happy forever, our sins must be forgiven and God's wrath removed and Christ must become our supreme Treasure. Only Jesus can do that. In fact, he has already done it. He died for our sins. He absorbed God's wrath. And he rose from the dead and is today therefore supremely precious. And he offers us that now as a free gift.
Let me draw a picture of this freedom to see if I can make it as clear as possible.

A Picture of Freedom


Let's take skydiving, for example. What you want is to experience the fullest possible exhilaration of freedom in skydiving. Let's suppose then that you are on your way to the airport to go up for your first real jump, but your car hits a pothole on Hiawatha Avenue, you have a blowout, and run into a telephone pole. You are no longer free to jump, whether you have the ability or not, because the opportunity passes while you wait for the tow truck. You lack the freedom of opportunity.
Or suppose you do make it to the airport, but it turns out that you skipped all the classes and don't know the first thing about skydiving. You lack the most basic abilities—like how to operate the parachute. The opportunity is there, but you don't have the freedom of ability. They're not going to let you jump.
But suppose that you make it to the airport, you went to all the classes, and have all the abilities needed. You take off in the little plane, but as soon they open the door and you look down, all your desire vanishes and in its place comes a paralyzing fear. The opportunity is there, the ability is there, but you don't have the freedom of desire.
But there is one last requirement for full freedom. Suppose you get to the airport with no obstacle (you have the freedom of opportunity); you have all the know-how necessary (you have the freedom of ability); you look out the door at the tiny clusters of silos and barns and farmhouses a few miles down, and just can't wait to jump (you have the freedom of desire). So you jump.
And as you free fall, enjoying every second of it, unknown to you, your parachute is defective and is not going to open no matter you do. Are you free—fully free, free indeed?
No. What you are doing so happily and so freely is going to kill you. Even though you don't know it yet, you are in bondage to destruction. It feels like freedom. But very soon the whole thing—all the exhilaration—will prove to be an illusion. In thirty seconds you'll be dead.
In order to be fully free—free indeed—the Son of God must set you free.

Dying and Rising to Make You Free Indeed

We have no manmade parachute. We have a Savior. Because he died for us, there is no condemnation. The inexorable, deadly, gravitational pull of our sins is broken. He has caught us in mid-fall and has become our supreme Treasure. Our destiny and our desires are new. He is their source, and he is their content. He gave us the new desire, and he is the new desire. "If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed."
Is it not then utterly foolish for a Christian to envy the so-called freedom of those who pitch themselves out the skyscraper window of sin and exult for a season in the exhilaration of free-fall greed, or free-fall drugs or free-fall fame, or free-fall sex, or free-fall power, or free-fall luxury oblivious of Jesus. All this freedom is like a vapor, but those who trust in Jesus, and treasure him above all, will mount up with wings like eagles, and be glad—a thousand years from now. They will be free indeed.
Jesus is not just giving you information in this message. He is giving you an invitation. Trust him. Treasure him. He died and he rose again to make you free indeed.

© Desiring God
Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way and do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction. For web posting, a link to this document on our website is preferred. Any exceptions to the above must be approved by Desiring God.
Please include the following statement on any distributed copy: By John Piper. © Desiring God. Website: desiringGod.org

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Sign In | Cart (Empty) | Contact | Support DG Desiring God International Home Resource Library Blog Store Events About Us Home / Resource Library / Sermons / Praying in the Closet and in the Spirit Praying in the Closet and in the Spirit January 03, 2010 | by John Piper | Scripture: Matthew 6:1-15 | Topic: Prayer Subscribe to... Watch: Full Length Listen: Full Length Excerpt Download Click To Play This is the first Sunday of our annual, year-beginning, Prayer Week. The very fact that we have such a thing as a Prayer Week raises the question I want to deal with today. But the question is much bigger than Prayer Week. The question is the relationship between discipline and freedom and spontaneity in prayer. Discipline By “discipline,” I mean planning to do certain things in regard to prayer, like… have a Prayer Week, or pray for before meals, or pray before an elders meeting, or kneel and pray in your wedding right after your vows, or at the beginning of a sermon, or early in the morning before breakfast going down in the basement nook with the space heater running, or with your spouse, just before you go to bed at night, or over the lunch hour in your cubicle, or on Tuesday and Friday mornings at church, or three times a day on your knees like Daniel (Daniel 6:10), or seven times a day like the psalmist (Psalm 119:164), or in the watches of the night (Psalm 119:148), or during and after your read your Bible in the morning. I call these “disciplines” of prayer because they don’t just pop out of you. You think about them, and decide they are a good thing to do, and then you intentionally do them. There is a certain measure of intentionality. Some people are very intentional, and we call them “disciplined.” And others are somewhat intentional. And others are not very intentional at all. And there are hundreds of gradations in between. We are all different. Freedom Alongside this, we think of “spontaneity.” Sometimes we use the word “freedom” to distinguish the difference from discipline. But I don’t want to put freedom alongside discipline because that would imply that there can’t be freedom in discipline. Which is not true. You can plan to pray in your wedding, and work out all the details down to how you will help her with her wedding dress, and hold each others’ hands, and yet, in that moment, feel an overwhelming, joyful, unfettered freedom of spirit—which means, you are doing just what you want to be doing and you are loving doing it. That’s what I mean by “freedom”—doing a good thing and loving doing it as you do it. The same is true for everyone of those disciplined acts I mentioned. In those acts of discipline, there can be wonderful freedom and joy. But it is also true that, because something is planned and we do it with some intentionality, we might also wind up doing it whether we enjoy it or not. You might be so light-headed when you kneel to pray at your wedding that you would just like for his moment to be over, and the sooner the better. This is not what we usually call “freedom.” You are not enjoying this moment, and can hardly compute what the pastor is saying. Or you might plan to pray with your roommates each night, and then have the joy go right out of the act because of tensions in the room. Or you might continue the tradition of praying before meals, and drift so far from God that the prayers become empty words, and they are done more like a machine than lover. Which would not be freedom. So I don’t put freedom alongside discipline as distinct from it. It can be wonderfully and powerfully present in any act of discipline. That’s what we long for. Spontaneity But alongside disciplined praying, like the ones I mentioned, I do put spontaneity. This is different from discipline. “Spontaneous” means that you didn’t plan it, but it rises up in your heart, and you do it without any specific earlier plan or intentionality. Something in the situation, or from the Holy Spirit, awakens the desire to pray. There is intention, but it happens in the moment spontaneously. You might… whisper a thank-you to God after a close call on the highway, or ask God for help in the middle of an exam, or confess to God your sin after saying something hurtful to a friend, or pray out in church during one of our congregational prayer times, or praise God for a beautiful sunset, or silently ask him for wisdom in the middle of a difficult phone conversation, or ask for strength when you are ready to drop and have another task to do, or pray for a missionary when you open his email and realize he needs help right now, or stop several times during an elder meeting to thank God and seek his guidance on some difficult matter facing the church. None of this is specifically planned. It is spontaneous. We tend to feel most free in our spontaneous praying, and often not as free in our disciplined, planned praying. A Swing of the Pendulum? So my question is: What does the Bible say about discipline and spontaneity and freedom in prayer? I was drawn to this topic this year because my sense is that, at least in the part of the evangelical church that I watch most closely, I think there is a swing of the pendulum from discipline to spontaneity in the name of gospel freedom. In other words, there is a concern to be gospel-driven, not discipline-driven. And this is often put in terms of legalism versus freedom. Or law versus grace. Overall, I think this way of thinking is a very good sign. If we don’t live on the gospel—that is, on the work of Christ for us on the cross—all our praying will indeed become a bondage and a stench in God’s nose. A Legalism of Resisting Discipline? On the other hand, it is possible to be a half-biblical person, and get real excited about the freedom and spontaneity of the gospel, and lose touch with the place that God has assigned to discipline, or intentionality. Our experience with God may be so shallow that the only way we have of conceiving of discipline is in terms of legalism—as though any intentionality that drives you to do a thing when you don’t feel like it can only be a work of the law, or an act of merit, or a way of earning salvation, or a strategy to get God on your side. And indeed, any act of discipline, no matter how good, may be just that. But what some fail to realize is that steadfast opposition to discipline may reflect a heart of legalism also. It is possible to turn any act or any resistance to an act into a legal performance that fails the gospel test. Which means that whether you are a person who leans toward discipline or a person who leans toward spontaneity, you are just as liable to trust in your own righteousness—your righteousness of discipline, or your righteousness of spontaneity—rather than Christ’s righteousness. The Heart of the Gospel The heart of the gospel is that Christ died for our sins (1 Corinthians 15:3). That is shorthand for saying that the only way to be right with God is on the basis of who Christ is and what Christ has done, not who you are and what you have done. Or another way to say the gospel is this: God’s being 100% for you is based on Christ alone, which we receive and enjoy by faith alone. You can’t get God any more on your side than he is on the basis of Christ alone received by faith alone. The biblical basis is 2 Corinthians 5:21: “God made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” He takes our sin. We become his righteousness. And that happens not by our doing a few righteous works—like disciplined praying or like the anti-discipline of spontaneous prayer. It happens by faith in Christ alone. As Paul says in Philippians 3:9, I want to be “found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.” The Dangers of Discipline and Spontaneity So when it comes to prayer and our standing with God, discipline counts for nothing, and resistance to discipline counts for nothing, but only faith working through love (Galatians 5:6). And that faith may be expressed in love through acts of discipline, or through warning against legalistic discipline. And that faith may be compromised by turning disciplined prayer into performance to get God on your side, or by turning the warning against legalist discipline into a performance to get God on your side. The opposite of legalism is not spontaneity. And the opposite of faith is not discipline. Spontaneity may be legalistic. And discipline may be an act of faith. Praying Both in the Closet and in the Spirit So let’s let the Bible teach us about the discipline of prayer and the spontaneity and freedom of prayer. I titled this message “Praying in the Closet and in the Spirit.” And the point of the title is to say that both are good and needed. The text from Matthew 6 refers to prayer in our closet, or our inner room. The texts that refer to praying “in the Spirit” are Ephesians 6:18 and Jude 1:20. Ephesians 6:18: “Pray at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints.” Jude 1:20: “But you, beloved, build yourselves up in your most holy faith and pray in the Holy Spirit.” Spontaneity in the Spirit What does it mean to pray “in the Spirit”? There is a good clue in 1 Corinthians 12:3, where Paul says, “No one speaking in the Spirit of God ever says ‘Jesus is accursed!’ and no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except in the Holy Spirit.” It seems clear to me that speaking “in the Spirit” means speaking under the guidance of the Spirit, or energized and helped by the Spirit. That’s why no one can say “Jesus be accursed” when speaking “in the Spirit.” And no one can say, “Jesus is Lord” (and mean it) unless he is speaking “in the Spirit.” So I take it that praying “in the Spirit” means praying under the guidance and with the help and energy of the Spirit. The Spirit is shaping our prayers and helping us pray. This is the way we pray when we are living on the gospel. This is the prayer-counterpart to faith in the gospel. When we are trusting God to love us and accept us and help us for Christ’s sake alone, the Holy Spirit is at work. He moves in and through that faith. How the Gospel Leads to Spontaneous Prayer The key verse is Galatians 3:5: “Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith?” The answer is that God supplies the Spirit by hearing with faith. That is, the Spirit moves in our lives and helps us pray and do everything else God calls us to do, not by being coerced by works, but because we are trusting God on the basis of Christ alone for this help. We don’t work our way into the Spirit. We trust God that, because of Christ—because of the blood and righteousness of Christ—the Spirit comes to help us and guide us. This is how the gospel relates to our praying in the Spirit. We don’t deserve this help from the Spirit. How do we get it? By works or by faith? Galatians 3:5 says by faith. We look to God, not as our enemy or as a frustrated father who can never be pleased, but as our Father who is 100% for us because of Christ alone. Therefore, we trust him, that because of Christ (his death and righteousness), he will give us the Spirit—and everything else we need. That is how we pray “in the Spirit.” That is what it means to be gospel-sustained. That is gospel-praying. Discipline in the Closet Now, what about praying in your closet—in your inner room? Jesus says in Matthew 6:5–6, When you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. 6 But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. Jesus says in verse 6: “Go to your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret.” Now, to go to your room and shut the door requires some movement. You have to be intentional about it. To leave people and find a private place, where you won’t be heard by others, takes some effort. Jesus says this is good. Do this. This simple command stands for a hundred ways you may plan to pray or be disciplined. This is just one: Be sure to make part of your praying the private prayer where it is just you and God. Take whatever steps necessary to secure this kind of praying in your life. And if this kind of intentionality can be a fruit of the gospel, so can the other kinds that the Bible talks about. How the Gospel Leads Us to Disciplined Prayer And my point is that this intentionality—this discipline of private prayer where no one else can hear you—is indeed a fruit of the gospel. It is a fruit of faith in God’s love for us on the basis of Christ alone. You can see this in three simple ways. 1) Obeying Our Savior Gospel-based faith trusts Christ, so that if he tells us that something is good for us, we believe him and do it. We have no reason to doubt his word. He died for us to prove that he and his Father are 100% for us. So if he says go to your room and pray to the Father, we trust him—not to make him be on our side, but because he is on our side. 2) Desiring to Receive More Gospel-based faith has tasted and seen that the Lord is good and is always eager to receive as much of Christ as we can. So when he bids us go to the closet to be rewarded by our Father, we go with great expectation that he has a gift for us—more of himself. In the gospel, we have seen that not only is Christ the basis of all we need, he is the sum of all we need. Because of what we have seen in the work of Christ, we have fallen out of love with the praise of men, and now crave the surpassing value of Christ. We come to the closet to have all that God is for us in Christ. He is our reward. That’s what faith does because of the gospel. It seeks more of Christ, more of God in private prayer. It’s not what man can give that satisfies us, but the reward of God himself. That’s blood-bought, gospel faith. 3) Knowing All Our Needs Are Met Finally, because of the gospel—because Christ died for us—we know that everything we need has been purchased for us. “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” (Romans 8:32). “All the promises of God find their Yes in him” (2 Corinthians 1:20). In other words, every answer to prayer that would be good for us, Christ purchased by his blood. We did not and cannot purchase them. So when we go to our closet, we are not going to make a purchase. We are not going to negotiate. We are going because God has ordained that what Christ obtained for us, we receive by asking. Intentionality Rooted in the Gospel If you were starving, and the food of life were in a locked container, and Christ died to open the container, you would not be a legalist if you walked five miles and stood all day stood in line to receive your food with tears of expectancy and gratitude. Knowing that he had absolutely secured your food at the cost of his life would make you confident and humble and grateful, but it would not make you say, “I don’t need to stand in line. I don’t believe in such discipline.” “I’ll just wait till it spontaneously falls into my mouth.” No. There is simple discipline. Simple intentionality rooted in the gospel. Ask and you will receive. Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened (Matthew 7:7). “When you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you” (Matthew 6:5–6). For More of Jesus For the sake of your own soul. For the sake of your family. For the sake of his church. For the sake of your vocation. For the sake of the nations. Plan this in 2010. Be intentional about this. Because Christ died for you, and through prayer God will give you what you need—mainly more of himself. © Desiring God Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way and do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction. For web posting, a link to this document on our website is preferred. Any exceptions to the above must be approved by Desiring God. Please include the following statement on any distributed copy: By John Piper. © Desiring God. 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