John Piper, the Pastor for Preaching at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, has had a profound influence on me personally with his writings and also on our children’s ministry. The curriculum that we use for children’s Sunday school is written by children’s ministry leaders from Bethlehem Baptist.For the past 9 months, he has been on a leave of absence in order to put some things back in order in his life that he felt were needing correction. He ended this leave starting January 1 and reported to his congregation some insights. Since he made them public, I have pulled what he reported about his marriage and family to share and hopefully challenge and encourage you as I was.
He reported:
Marriage
The crucible for refining my soul is marriage and family—even more so than the challenges of ministry. So I turn to these now, knowing that I am still talking about the effects of the leave on my soul.
On December 21, Noël and I celebrated our 42nd wedding anniversary. It was peaceful, happy, memory-laden, sober, and sweet. We are in a good place.
I would label my decades-long, besetting (and I hope weakening) sins in this relationship as selfishness, self-pity, anger, blaming, and sullenness (all of them species of pride). There are others, but these are close to the root of our troubles. I put my gun-sights (Romans 8:13) on these with increasing focus as the leave went on.
Time will tell, and Noël will tell, whether the progress I have made is deep and durable. I pray it is. How these changes happened and what God has used to bring them about, will, no doubt, be subjects of messages and writings in the months and years to come.
For now, I should simply say that in the refining process God has used a combination of things:
1. private soul-work in the word and prayer,
2. formal counseling,
3. the faithful personal ministry of David and Karin Livingston, who have been more deeply in our lives than anyone else,
4. much reading about the relational shape our sins take on,
5. research into the peculiar (dis?)orders our brains bring to the relationship,
6. corporate worship,
7. endless conversations (time!),
8. new physical efforts to be strong and healthy (sleep, exercise, diet, leisure), and
9. new, more rigorous applications of Philippians 2:12–13 (“Work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for God is the one at work in you”).
The upshot for our marriage of this sanctifying work has been
1. less withdrawal, more engagement,
2. less moodiness and sullenness, more hope-filled emotions,
3. less brooding over past disappointments, more dreaming from God’s promises,
4. less of a critical spirit, more verbal affirmation,
5. more tenderness, kindness, and touch,
6. more intentional time together,
7. more patience with (genetic?) personality traits without assuming sin,
8. more of a spirit of forgiveness,
9. more gratitude and less taking for granted,
10. more courage to name sins (our own and each other’s) without sounding hopeless or condemning,
11. a fresh sense of God’s gracious fatherhood over us, who, when he disapproves, does not hold us in contempt—and our learning to do this for each other.
Relationally, perhaps the most crucial text has been Ephesians 4:31–5:2.
Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
God has been very patient with us.
Family
There has been a lot more spontaneity and availability in these months than usual. We have tried to be intentional about being in the lives of our sons and daughters-in-law and to our 12 grandchildren. That has meant helping with house-painting, yard-cleaning, lots of babysitting, some really wonderful times of unhurried leisure together, and some weighty conversations as I tried to share with my sons some of the things I was learning about my own soul and marriage.
Talitha has been a great joy during these months. She has flourished in two home-school co-ops, and in worship leadership in the youth group at Bethlehem. We have drawn her into as much of our personal, marriage, and family issues as seemed appropriate, and she has been sensitive, wise, and affectionate to all concerned. I am a very fortunate father.
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