seen here<\/a>.<\/p>\nAdrian
<\/span><\/em><\/strong>People do talk about you, John, as having a real sort of passion about you. It\u2019s almost like a zeal, I guess. In fact, particularly when you\u2019re preaching, I certainly experience that, having actually only heard you for the first time in the flesh last night, and so many people afterwards were saying the same thing. I was just blown away by the passion, and also by a sense of the presence of God that you brought when you were preaching. I guess that\u2019s probably the best way of describing it. Is that something that you\u2019re aware of in some way for yourself? Is that something you can explain a bit as to why you feel that other people experience that? Is it something you feel yourself when you\u2019re preaching as well? How did that come about? Because I know, for example, that Lig Duncan said that when he heard you preach at Together for the Gospel, he felt, \u201cBoy, I\u2019ve never preached before. I\u2019ve never done it.\u201d So what is it about you? Is there something special about you? Do you have some kind of secret you can share with the rest of us?<\/p>\nJohn
<\/span><\/em><\/strong>I don\u2019t usually feel that way when I\u2019m done preaching, okay? I talked to Don Carson one time, and I regard Don as a very effective communicator and a brilliant person.![\"John](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/298\/2008\/06\/200536998_4a277a3fa5-753428.jpg\")
He mentioned to me that he regularly walks away from his events feeling that he\u2019s blown it, which made me feel better, because I don\u2019t think you can ever quite know what God\u2019s doing. At the times that I have felt bleakest about the way I did what I was supposed to do, others have testified to being helped. And the times I felt liberated, free, engaged \u2014 Did anything happen in them<\/strong><\/em> rather than just in me? So, I\u2019m very suspicious about the way I feel about my preaching. I doubt myself regularly that my assessment of what just happened is accurate. Which helps me and hurts me. It means I never feel very excited about what I\u2019ve just done, and it means I don\u2019t fall out the bottom because I say, \u201cWell, God can do what he wants to do. You know, Balaam\u2019s ass can accomplish what he wants, so he might use that, even though I felt terrible about it. So I\u2019m a lousy judge when it comes to saying, \u201cWas there a presence of God, or was there an anointing, or was there an effect?\u201d<\/p>\nI just know that what I want is the gift of self-forgetfulness in what I would call a full engagement, a full passion, a full zeal with what\u2019s there in the text, and the reality of God in and through the text. I want to see him, and know him, be engaged by him, be thrilled<\/em> by him, say it with whatever effectiveness I can, and let the chips fall where they will. And that, as far as my own subjective awareness goes, that rises and falls. One Sunday I feel thrilled. I feel met. I feel carried. I feel helped. And others I don\u2019t. But that doesn\u2019t correlate necessarily with what God is doing in the people out there. So, to me, an effective, experienced sermon would be when I forget myself. I\u2019m not thinking, \u201cOh, I\u2019m doing well here,\u201d or \u201cI\u2019m doing badly here,\u201d or \u201cThat was an effective comment,\u201d \u2014 anything like that ruins it for me. The gift is when you\u2019re not outside yourself watching yourself. You\u2019re so here\u2014you\u2019re so here that you\u2019re not at all conscious\u2014there\u2019s no two of you, there\u2019s just one of you, and God and the people, and a transaction is happening that\u2019s a miracle. Because you can\u2019t choose to forget yourself. The act of choosing to forget yourself is self-awareness. So it\u2019s a gift. It\u2019s a phenomenal precious gift in the moment. You pray for it ahead of time, and it may come for twenty minutes and then you lose it for ten, and you\u2019re thinking about your hands, and you\u2019re thinking about your notes, and you\u2019re thinking about the faces out there, and it\u2019s all discombobulated, and then it may be taken away in the moment, and you\u2019re free to . . . you go, and you wake up ten minutes later and \u2014 What was THAT?<\/em> You know? That was free!! So that\u2019s what I\u2019m after.<\/p>\nI think there are ways to cultivate what I\u2019m talking about. It basically is cultivating God-centeredness. It\u2019s cultivating prayer. It\u2019s cultivating a serious engagement with the Word. It\u2019s cultivating asking certain kinds of God-centered, Christ-exalting questions. There\u2019s a focus and a preoccupation. And then my root Christian hedonism, I mean, my root philosophy of life \u2014 whether you are satisfied in God really does make a difference as to whether you can glorify God! That\u2019s a huge thing! It\u2019s a theoretical construct that I think is in the Bible, but it has a practical effect because I really believe that if you\u2019re not passionate about God, you won\u2019t glorify him as much. If you\u2019re more passionate about football than God, you glorify football. If you\u2019re more passionate about food or cooking or sex or money or work or the stock market than you are about God, then that\u2019s what gets glorified. God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him. That construct of reality has an effect on how you pray about your life and how you live you life.<\/p>\n
Continued in part 3<\/a> . . .<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Yesterday we began sharing the transcript of my interview with John Piper at New Word Alive. Today we continue with John Piper talking about passionate preaching. The video of today\u2019s segment can be seen here. AdrianPeople do talk about you, John, as having a real sort of passion about you. It\u2019s almost like a zeal, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1268,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58,98,115],"tags":[561,408],"class_list":["post-3139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-john-piper","category-nwa08","category-preaching","tag-john-piper","tag-preaching-2"],"yoast_head":"\n
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