Semper Fidelis

John Piper recently preached a message to a group of Christian counselors and his opening statements are, to me, simply astounding. That the same sins he should be struggling with are so similar to mine. Surely apart from Grace we are all undone.

Beholding Glory and Becoming Whole: Seeing and Savoring God as the Heart of Mental Health

So to spare you some analysis, I will tell you that you are listening to as sinner. A man

who must crucify the love of praise every day;
who struggles with the same adolescent fear at age 63 that he had at 15, the fear of looking foolish;
who is prone to feel self-pity and pout when he doesn’t get loved the way he wants;
who is almost never sure he has used his time in the best way and therefore struggles with guilt;
who is short on compassion and long on critical analysis;
who can freeze up emotionally when he’s tired, and feel instinctively that it’s someone else’s fault;
who loves to praise God in the great assembly and feels a constraint on his spirit in his own living room;
who has loved his wife of forty years imperfectly and spent with her over three of those years with a Christian counselor trying to become better images of Christ and the church;
and who never feels sure that his motives are pure, including right now, for why he is telling you all this.
At one level, I want you to be open to what I have to say, and I thought that being open with you might help you be open to me. At another level, a better one I hope, I want you to see why I love the grace of God. He has infinite warrant to throw me away. And he hasn’t done it. So the theme of this conference, Grace and Truth, is very precious to me. “The steadfast love of the Lord is better than life” (Psalm 63:3)

- John Piper