Thank you so much for coming back. For those of you who are here for the first time, I’ll try to say things in a way that might catch people up so that what you missed last night won’t blame you for benefiting from what we’re going to do now together.

The Future Orientation of Faith

Faith is profoundly and pervasively future-oriented. That’s the next point. We’re talking about future grace, and faith in future grace as a means of severing the power of sin and living a holy and pure life. We’ve looked at texts to say this, but let me say it again. This is the next point.

Faith can look back and believe a truth about the past, like the truth that Christ died for our sins. It can look out and trust a person. I could look at Al and say, “I trust you.” That would mean right this moment, I trust this person. Or, it can look forward and be assured about a promise, like, “I’ll be with you to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20), or, “I’ll be with you in five minutes.”

So, faith can look in all those three directions, and I don’t mean to deny any of them when I put the emphasis here on future grace and looking to the future. But even when faith embraces a past reality, its saving essence includes the embrace of the implications of that past reality for the present and future. I said this last night that if you look back to the cross and you say, “I believe that that was the most magnificent expression of divine love for me that ever was and that it covers all my sins and provides all my righteousness,” and then you turn to the future and it has zero implications, you don’t believe it.

Because what he bought was eternal life. What he bought was the power to glorify him. What he bought was your next five minutes of holiness. And if you say, “I believe all that in the past, but it has zero importance here,” then you don’t believe all that. And therefore, I say, believing him for the future is of the essence of believing him at all.

If while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life (Romans 5:10).

So, his Son died, and if I believe that happened. I am now reconciled. Therefore, all the more, I will be saved. That all comes as a package. You can’t pick a piece of that and say, “I believe that, but not the other.”

Past Grace with Implications for the Future

Thus, when faith looks back and embraces the death of the Son, it also embraces the reconciliation of the present and the salvation of the future.

Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen (Hebrews 11:1).

Or listen 2 Corinthians 1:8–9:

For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead.

What is Paul saying there? He’s saying that God brought him to the brink of despair and of life. He thought it was over. And why did God do that? God pulled him back from the brink, but why did God take him to the brink and let him look over? He says, “So that I would rely on God . . .” When? The point is that from now and for the rest of his life he will rely on the God who raises the dead. God was weaning him off of false reliances for tomorrow, not yesterday. He had a lesson to teach Paul about how to do the next imprisonment. The lesson is, “Rely on me. That’s why I brought you to the point of death, so that you’d rely on me tomorrow, this afternoon.” This is about trusting him in the future.

So, the conclusion on this is that saving faith is profoundly and pervasively (I don’t say only) future-oriented. There is no saving act of faith, whether looking back in history, out to a person, or forward to a promise, that does not include a future orientation. All the life you have left to live is in the future. Therefore, the only place that faith has any relevance is in the future, five seconds from now and 5,000 years from now.

What Faith Relishes

Faith is not just future-oriented, but I’m also arguing that it is being satisfied with all that God promises to be for us in Christ. I said that last night, and I said I would come to a text. Here’s the text. It’s not the only one from which I would argue for this. In John 6:35, Jesus says to them:

I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.

Notice that coming and believing are parallel. They’re interchangeable here. He could have said it the other way around: “Whoever believes in me shall not hunger, whoever comes to me shall never thirst.” The reason that’s important to see is that when you put them in parallel, they illuminate each other. What is belief, therefore, in this verse? That’s what I’m after. I want a definition of faith. What is believing? I would argue from this verse that believing is a coming to Jesus as bread for the satisfaction of my soul. He says, “If you come, you’re not going to thirst. If you come, you’re not going to hunger.” He is living water and he is divine bread.

So faith is an embracing, a receiving, a coming to Jesus as soul-satisfying drink, and a soul-satisfying meal, bread, and water. And when you’re believing, you’re there with him, receiving, trusting, and being satisfied. And your faith goes up and down. What I mean by going up and down is that you are more or less satisfied in Jesus. That definition of faith is the key for how faith sanctifies. I mean, we’re right at the heart of this talk.

Broken Cisterns and the Fountain of Living Water

If you get what I’m saying right now and you embrace it and believe it, and then you spend the rest of your life pursuing that kind of faith, you will be pursuing the power to sever the sin in your life because sin and Christ are competing satisfactions. Like I said last night, nobody sins out of duty. We sin because sin offers some measure of satisfaction. If for a minute, or if for a hundred years, whatever we think, sin is lying to us and telling us, “If you do this, or think this, or feel this, you will be happier.” It’s a lie. It’s always a lie. The only way that lie can be exposed and triumphed over is when there’s bread and there’s a fountain, and you have tasted and he is better, and therefore, you fight to see, to taste, and to rest and be there drinking so that the broken cistern will not attract you.

Jeremiah 2:13 says:

My people have committed two evils:
they have forsaken me,
     the fountain of living waters,
and hewed out cisterns for themselves,
     broken cisterns that can hold no water.

That’s what South Florida and Minneapolis are doing every day. They’re digging in the dirt, sucking on the dirt, desperately trying to find what was in the fountain of living water. And God is saying, “This is insane, to walk away from me, the fountain of living water, and suck on dirt, desperately trying to find where it can be found.” That’s our job. Our job is to point people to the fountain.

Because when you’ve tasted it, when John 6:35 has happened, and the bread has been tasted, and the water has been drunk, you can be tempted by another bread and another water, but God has shown you where the fountain is, and where the bread is, and now you can fight for satisfaction and for faith and sever that root.

The Function of Past Grace

What about the function of past grace? It puts solid ground under the faith in future grace. My favorite verse in the Bible, probably, is Romans 8:32, if I had to choose one:

He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all (that’s past), how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?

That’s a rhetorical question that we could turn into a statemen, and the statement is: he most certainly will give us all things. So, now, here’s the way past grace functions. You get up in the morning and you think of a past reality, “He didn’t spare his Son but gave him for me.” And then the next step in your mind should be, “Therefore (this is iron-clad, heavenly logic), he will spare no effort for me today to give me everything I need.” And so, the function of past grace is to make you solid in your confidence in future grace. In a thousand years it’s going to be okay with you, and in 10 seconds it’s going to be okay with you.

The Indispensible Role of the Holy Spirit

I want the Holy Spirit to be honored. I have made a strong case that faith in future grace is the agent of sanctification because Acts 26:18 says, “Sanctified by faith.” And that’s what I’ve been arguing. The way it sanctifies is that it’s future-oriented, and it is a being satisfied in all that God is. Therefore, that superior satisfaction in all the points of the future severs the root of these other competing satisfactions, and you walk in liberty and freedom.

I mentioned the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit, according to Galatians 5:22–23, is the one whose fruit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, meekness, faithfulness, and self-control — all those things that are the freedom when you’re free from the works of the flesh. And so, clearly, the Holy Spirit must be honored here. So, what is his role in what I’ve been saying? Galatians 3:5 is to me absolutely crucial to understand as the link:

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 . . . ?

I think you shouldn’t put any boundaries on those miracles. I mean the miracle of love, and I mean the miracle of healing. There are the more extraordinary kinds of miracles, and there are the ones you would call ordinary. Although, these ordinary ones are harder. Being a loving person is harder than getting well. You can take a pill to help the Holy Spirit make you well. You can’t take a pill to help the Holy Spirit make you loving. Again, Paul says:

Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law (the answer to that is no), or by hearing with faith? (and the answer to that is yes).

So, how is the Holy Spirit supplied today? Let’s say you have something you need to do this afternoon. It’s a challenge. It’s a relational issue that needs addressing, and you know you don’t have it in you to do it. You need God. You need the Holy Spirit to bear the fruit of love, patience, kindness, and meekness. That’s what you need in your marriage, or with your kids, or with somebody that you have a problem with. You need meekness, and you don’t have it in you. You’re not a meek person. You need the Holy Spirit. How is he supplied to you? And the answer is: “by hearing with faith.” That’s what I’m talking about. When I say faith in future grace is the agent, I mean, faith in future grace is the channel along which the Holy Spirit works.

The Channel of the Holy Spirit’s Work

The Holy Spirit is God and does what he pleases. I’m not God, but I have to live and God calls me to live, and yet he calls me to walk by the Spirit. He says, “Be filled with the Holy Spirit” (Ephesians 5:18), and, “Keep in step with the Spirit” (Galatians 5:25). So, what do I do? And my answer is, trust him. Trust the promises of God. That’s why it’s called hearing. What are you hearing? You’re hearing a word from God. You hear God saying, “I will help you. I will strengthen you. I’ll be there for you. I’ll never forsake you. I will satisfy you. I’ll meet every need you have. I’ll keep you.” Believe those promises. If you are believing then the Holy Spirit is working. The Holy Spirit comes into the soul, and the form he takes is faith.

He comes along the channel of faith, but he’s like that big machine that made a tunnel under the airport in Minneapolis so that the light rail could go under there. That machine was just boring a huge hole and making its own way. The Holy Spirit is like that. It’s his fruit. He creates the faith, and he flows in the faith. And so, when you ask, “Well, I’m not the Holy Spirit. I have no power over the Holy Spirit, so what can I do?” You can believe. You can hear promises with faith. You can hear with faith. You can sit right there right now and every verse I read to you, you can say, “I believe that.” Ask the Holy Spirit to make that true, down to the fibers of your inner being, that you believe.

Why does the Spirit unite himself to faith as the way of bringing about the works of love? I’ve just argued that wherever faith is moving, that’s the Holy Spirit’s moving. Why is it always like that? Why did the Holy Spirit ordain that faith would be the pathway along which he’s moving, so that wherever you’re believing, the Spirit is moving? Why? Here’s my answer: because the Holy Spirit’s mission is to glorify Jesus, and so he makes conscious faith in Christ-exalting promises the means by which he works. In John 16:14 Jesus says he’s going to send the Holy Spirit, and he says:

He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you.

J.I. Packer says in his excellent book Keep in Step With the Spirit, “The number one mission of the Holy Spirit in the world is to glorify Jesus.” That is, to make Jesus look really good in your life, to make him look good to you, and to make him look good through you. That’s his job. The Holy Spirit is the, as it were, self-effacing member of the Trinity, who’s always putting Jesus up.

Directing Our Faith to Christ

Now, I ask you, if it’s the Holy Spirit’s job to sanctify you, which it is, and if your holiness is the fruit of the Holy Spirit and his job is to glorify Jesus in that, how would he go about it? Would he just ignore everything Jesus said, along with all the promises of God and all the blood work of God in your life, and just magically do it and suddenly make you a nice person? Would he do it in such a way that Jesus was never brought up, and you didn’t have Jesus in your mind or any promises but you’re just being nice to everybody? Who gets the glory in that? You do. The Holy Spirit is totally invisible behind all that. That’s not the way he does it.

He has ordained to do it with in a very earthy, mental, emotional, get-up-in-the-morning, open-your-Bible, read-some-concrete-statements-of-Jesus-Christ kind of way. Take, for example, the promise, “I’ll help you today. I’ll never leave you.” He inspires faith in that. And as you do the hard thing you have to do because of the promise of Jesus, Jesus gets the glory, and that makes the Holy Spirit happy. The Holy Spirit can be grieved (Ephesians 4:30), and he can be happy. You don’t want to grieve the Holy Spirit. He’s the best friend you have. And he will be grieved if you attempt to do good things any other way than by trusting Jesus to help you and trusting the promises of Jesus that are bought by the blood of Jesus, so that the blood gets the glory and the promises get the glory.

Faith Working through Love

How does faith in future grace produce love? Here, we are shifting. This is where I intended to end last night and didn’t get there. Everything else from here on out is an effort to take what we’ve seen in the nature of faith, the nature of grace, the nature of its futurity, and the nature of being satisfied, and ask the how question (positively) of how it inspires love, and then (negatively) how it helps us defeat the sins I mentioned we would address. We’ll start with love. Love is the big summary Christian virtue. When you’re defeating sin and living positively as you ought, it’s called love.

Galatians 5:6 says:

For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.

Remember, in Galatians 5:22 it’s going to say that love is a fruit of the Holy Spirit. And here it says, “Love is the product of faith.” I’ve just tried to spend the last five minutes explaining how that works. Don’t ever belittle either. Don’t ever say, “Oh, I don’t need the Holy Spirit, I’ve got faith.” And don’t ever say, “I’ve got the Holy Spirit, I don’t need faith.” Love is being produced by reliance upon the blood-bought promises of God, and the Holy Spirit is producing that love by awakening that faith. He goes along the channel of faith.

Loving Our Enemies

Here’s an example. In Matthew 5:43–44, Jesus says:

You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you . . .

There’s a concrete thing for us to do. Do you have some enemies, some people that you don’t like or some people that don’t like you? Are there some people that have been mean to you, cruel to you, lied about you, slandered you, or abused you? The Bible says you’re supposed to love them. And then it gives us an example of love — praying for them, not against them, and meaning it when you pray for them. And so, one meaning of loving enemies is to pray for them. Do you see that? He says, “Pray for those who persecute you.” Now, here’s my question, is praying for someone who has abused you harder, or is rejoicing in the moment of their abuse harder?

Here’s why I ask that. Matthew 5:11 says:

Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account (they’re slandering you). Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Great Is Your Reward

So Jesus has two commands concerning those who persecute us. One is to pray for them, and the other is to be happy when they’re doing it. Now, my question is, which is harder? And my answer to that question is that it’s harder to be happy. I can will a prayer, saying, “God, bless them,” or something like that. I can say things. I can even mean it, I suppose. I don’t want them to go to hell. I want them to go to heaven.

But when I’m being slandered, for me to feel something, to rejoice and be glad, that’s a miracle I have zero control of. I just cannot make that happen. I cannot. I can’t pull that off. So, my logic goes like this: if there’s a way for that to happen, for Matthew 5:11–12 to happen, then arguing from the greater to the lesser, surely then I could pray for somebody who’s my enemy, and that’s called love. So, what’s the key to rejoicing in persecution? The answer is clear here: “your reward is great in heaven” (Matthew 5:12). Do you believe it? That’s the issue.

If you were to say to Jesus, “I can’t do it,” he would say, “You don’t believe it then, because I argued that the key to rejoicing and being glad in the face of persecution is that your reward is great in heaven. This is working for you an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. Fix your eyes on things that are eternal, not on things that are on the earth. That will be the difference.” And so, for me, the battle to rejoice in persecution and thus pray authentically for the good of my enemies and thus love them is about faith in future grace. That’s how it works. That’s how it ought to work.

Relying on Our Father’s Good Will

Here’s another example of how it works:

Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him! So . . . (Matthew 7:9–12).

The word so is the Greek word oun. It means therefore. And he continues:

So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets (matthew 7:12).

Would you agree with me that Matthew 7:12 is a summons, a command to love? That’s a golden rule: “Whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them . . .” That’s a very radical command. You know that you want to be safe, you want to be secure, you want to be honored, you want to be treated fairly, you want to be helped, and you want to be encouraged. And so, whatever you want, you should just make your lifestyle to do that for everybody. Do that for others, whatever you want. That’s love.

Where does that come from? How does this therefore work? Have you ever thought about how the therefore in Matthew 7:12 relates to Matthew 7:9–11? Here’s the way they relate. You have a Father in heaven, who in this text, promises you that he’ll never give you a serpent and never give you a stone when you ask. He will always give good gifts to you. He will give good things to those who ask him. He’ll give you what you need always. No prayer is ever uttered in vain. If he doesn’t give you the precise thing you’re asking, he’s working out something better for you.

That’s called faith in future grace. Do you believe that? If you believe it, then it will be, therefore, you will have the wherewithal in this craving soul of ours to do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Where does the golden rule come from? It comes from faith in a Father who promises to be everything we need when we give ourselves unstintingly to others the way we would like to have people give themselves to us. That’s what it says. That’s what therefore means. You have a Father who promises to give you good things this afternoon — all you need — therefore, don’t be self-protecting, saying, “Well, I can’t do that good deed. I can’t say that kind of thing, and I can’t reconcile that, because then I’m going to lose.” You’re not going to lose anything. You have almighty God promising to give you everything you need.

How could you lose by doing good? How could you lose by risking being slandered again by forgiving? You can’t lose. You have a Father. That’s the logic of future grace.

For the Joy Set Before Him

Let’s linger on this one.

Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God (Hebrews 12:2–3).

How did Jesus succeed in loving us to the uttermost? The answer in this text is, “for the joy that was set before him.” Is it at all a stretch to say that he loved us to the uttermost by faith in future grace? Maybe grace is not the right word for Jesus since he deserved everything and we don’t deserve anything. Maybe you could say it was faith in future joy, which he happens to deserve and we happen to not deserve, but our promise is to get it anyway, and so, we call it grace. But here’s Jesus at the cross, and he’s required to do the impossible for human nature. And he had a human nature. In his human nature, he modeled for us how to endure our cross and how to despise the shame that is heaped upon us. And so, he showed us how to love to the uttermost.

The answer was the reward that was set before him, just like Matthew 5:12. He was thinking, “Father, you’re going to bring me out of the grave. You’re going to surround me with a countless host of worshiping people. My blessed Peter, who denied me, and my blessed 11 who walked away from me and abandoned me, they’re coming back. They’re going to repent, and I’m purchasing and covering all their sins plus millions more. And I am thrilled at that prospect. And therefore, I will endure anything in this moment in order to bring that to pass.”

That’s the logic that runs right through Hebrews 10, 11, 12, and 13. So, don’t ever presume to be motivated, in your pursuit of cross-bearing with grace, in a way somehow morally superior to Jesus and his motivation. He was motivated by setting his heart on joy promised by the Father, and you should be too.

The Source of Love

That’s my answer to the question, where does love come from? Love comes from being satisfied with all that God is for us in Jesus — that is, trusting him for all that he promises to be for us, and having a satisfaction that then overflows to meet the needs of others. Therefore, the fight for love is a fight to believe in the supremacy of the treasure of God’s promises in your life. That’s what God is for you, and what he promises to be for you is more precious than any unloving act could give you.

All my unloving acts towards my wife are failures to believe in the promises of God. I can identify them. I can identify them while they’re happening. I hate it. The fight to love Noël as I ought to love Noël, or to love my sons or my daughter the way I ought to, is a fight to keep seeing Jesus and his blood-bought promises for me as supremely valuable so that in these little moments I act as I ought.

I put the garage door opener straight like this on the visor, and every time I get in the car, she’s turned it like this, and I turn it back. And the next day, it’s turned like this. Is it not incredible what things like that can do to a relationship?

I went to a counselor one time and he said, “Piper, you’ve got a problem. You globalize.” That’s true. Frankly, I think it’s a virtue. He didn’t think so, and it’s a huge problem. Globalizing is thinking, “Well, if she keeps turning it, she’s obviously insubordinate. Insubordination is unbelief. I don’t even know if my wife is a believer.” That’s called globalizing, right?

Well, take it wherever you take it. All I’m saying is that the fight to love in a moment when you feel you’re justified to say something and you know love wouldn’t say it and would let it go, is the fight to trust the promises of future grace, that not saying the unloving thing will bring about more joy in Jesus than if you went ahead and said it.

Do Not Be Anxious

Let’s talk about anxiety as a specific instance of sin. There are all kinds of anxieties. I linger over anxiety because I think it’s a universal experience. Jesus seemed to think was a big issue since he addressed it so relentlessly and amazingly. This is my definition of it: the loss of confident security in God, accompanied by feelings of uneasiness or foreboding that something harmful is going to happen. God doesn’t want you to have those feelings. They come, and he wants to then help you get rid of them. He wants us to get rid of anxiety. And so, he tells this long, beautiful instance of how to fight anxiety in Matthew 6:28–30, which says:

And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?

This is faith in the future grace of being clothed and faith in the future grace of being taken care of. Probably, a lot of folks in this room right now have financial problems. Maybe something else broke last night. You can’t even afford what broke yesterday, and it broke again and now you’ve got another bill on the way. And you’re anxious inside. Jesus knows all about that. He told his disciples to go out with just one pair of shoes and one coat. So, if they got ripped off, they might think, “Where am I going to get another coat?” He said, “I’ll take care of you.” He wants us to trust him.

He’s arguing, “Don’t be of little faith; be of big faith, trust me.” He says:

Therefore do not be anxious, saying, “What shall we eat?” or “What shall we drink?” or “What shall we wear?” . . . But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you (Matthew 6:31–33).

He’ll just give you whatever you need. I think that’s what that means. He’ll give you whatever you need, and then you can lay your head down and go to sleep.

New Mercies for New Troubles

I love this way Lamentations relates to Matthew 6:34, which says:

Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.

Tomorrow will have its appointed amount of trouble, and then the next day has its appointed amount of trouble, right? That’s what that says. Every day has its amount of trouble. So, God has spread the trouble out over your life, and he knows how much will come each day, and he’s appointed trouble for every day. I think that’s what Matthew 6:34 is saying. Each day has its trouble, and God is sovereign, so he’s not letting all the trouble come in one day. He’s spreading out the trouble over all the days. Now, what’s so wonderful about that is that Lamentations 3:22–23 has something similar to say about mercy:

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;
     his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning . . .

Why are they new every morning? Because I have new troubles every morning, and they’re tailor-made. All the new morning mercies are tailor-made for the new morning troubles, which is why, if you try to bring tomorrow’s troubles into today, the mercy is still out there tomorrow. The mercy is coming tomorrow for that trouble. Mercy is not being given today for that trouble, it’s coming tomorrow for that trouble. It is a liberating thing to live like this.

So, when you ponder, “I don’t know if I’m going to be able to do the job that they’re going to give me in a week. I don’t know if I’m going to be able to take the test that they’re going to give me. I don’t know if I’m going to be able to do this. I don’t know about tomorrow, because I don’t feel able. I don’t feel sufficient.” And God’s answer is, “You’re not supposed to feel sufficient today. You’re supposed to feel sufficient when the trouble comes by trusting that the mercies will be new every morning.”

Sufficient for the Day

You have new troubles coming but you don’t even know what they are. Why are you getting anxious? You think you know what they are, but they’re going to be way better or way worse than you know, but God is saying, “I have it all under control because I have mercies appointed for those troubles.” So, the key to overcoming anxiety today is not by stockpiling a perfectly wonderful imagination of the 10 days troubles that are coming — because you don’t know how sweet the mercies are going to be every morning to handle those — but to trust, “Okay, I don’t know what’s coming, I don’t think I can be sufficient. Right now, I feel utterly weak. I’m at my wit’s end. Today, I’ve exhausted the mercies.” That’s exactly right. Of course, you have exhausted the mercies for today. That’s all they were for.

Now, get a good night’s rest in faith, and guess what? When you wake up in the morning, there’s going to be new mercies for the new day and the new pain, or challenge, or whatever. So, anxiety goes when we fall into that routine. Psalm 56:3 says:

When I am afraid,
     I put my trust in you.

That’s one of our favorite kids’ fighter verses in our church. All the kids say this: “When I am afraid, I put my trust in you.” That’s a glorious thing for a kid to learn to say, not before or after, but when I am afraid, then I fight for trust.

Anxiety About Being Useless

Here are a few specifics. Consider anxiety about being useless. A lot of retired people feel this. I don’t like the word retirement. I don’t think it’s biblical.

Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain (1 Corinthians 15:58).

You have never done the slightest good thing in the name of Jesus in vain. If the world didn’t recognize it, or even see it because your left hand didn’t know what your right hand was doing, and you were appropriately quiet about this good deed, God wrote it down. Oh, yes, he did. And you will receive back for what you’ve done in the body — every good thing. Nothing needs to be useless.

Anxiety About Weakness

What about anxiety about feeling weak?

He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong (2 Corinthians 12:9–10).

He says, “My grace is sufficient for you.” That’s future. He says, “My power is made perfect in weakness.” That’s a future power. Paul was concerned about what the the implications of his weakness would be for this afternoon, tonight, and tomorrow, not yesterday. Yesterday’s gone forever. Not even God can change yesterday. But this afternoon, my weakness could ruin the deal, and my weakness could lose my job. I’m worried about my weakness. And Paul says, “God’s grace is sufficient this afternoon, and his power will be made perfect.” Will you trust future grace?

Anxiety About Difficult Decisions

What about anxiety about difficult decisions?

I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go;
     I will counsel you with my eye upon you (Psalm 32:8).

Good and upright is the Lord;
   ​​  therefore he instructs sinners in the way (Psalm 25:8).

I love that verse because we all qualify for that. What must I do to have God’s guidance? Just know you’re a sinner. It continues:

He leads the humble in what is right,
     and teaches the humble his way (Psalm 25:9).

I would guess that half of you in this room are wrestling with some unknown path that you have to choose between soon, and you don’t know what to do. You’re thinking, “Is it this way or this way. What do I do?” God comes to you and doesn’t want you to be anxious about that. And he says, “I’ll instruct you. I’ll teach you. I’ll counsel you. I’ll put my eye on you. I know everything. I won’t let my children waste their lives. Just trust me. Look to me. Bank on me.” Trusting in future grace takes away anxiety about decisions.

Anxiety About Aging

What about anxiety about aging?

Listen to me, O house of Jacob,
     all the remnant of the house of Israel,
who have been borne by me from before your birth,
     carried from the womb;
even to your old age I am he,
     and to gray hairs I will carry you.
I have made, and I will bear;
     I will carry and will save (Isaiah 46:3–4).

When you read this as an older person, you should read it as if God almighty, by the Spirit, in the promise of his word, is as near to you as your closest friend, and he is looking you right in the eye and saying, “I’m going to take care of you and your old age. I’m going to carry you. You needed to be carried when you were little, you’re going to need to be carried when you’re old, and I’m going to carry you.”

That’s very comforting to me. I don’t like the prospect of Alzheimer’s. My dad didn’t know me at the end, except in moments of wonderful clarity. My sister called from South Carolina and said, “I think you better come. I don’t think dad is going to be here much longer.” I said, “Okay.” So, I get on the plane wondering if I was going to make it. I got to the resident hospital and he was there. He looked dead in the bed with his mouth open, if you’ve ever seen anybody in their last hours. So, I walked over and I took his arms, and I knew he was hard of hearing, so I said loudly, “Daddy, it’s Johnny.”

And he opened his eyes and he said, “I knew you’d come.” That’s the last thing he ever said to me, except he said “amen” after I prayed. I prayed, he said amen, and then a day later, he was gone. I think God carried him. I think he did, that he could say amen to my prayer. That’s the way it was with his dad too. I remember going to my grandfather’s death side, and my father was praying so loud in his ear that the whole nursing home could hear. I was kind of embarrassed because I was a freshman in college, I think. And he looked — I’m sure he weighed 80 pounds, curled up in a fetal position with a diaper on — and when my dad was done, his whole body said, “Amen.” That was the last thing I ever saw from my grandfather.

I just say, “God, that’s amazing. You are carrying these broken old people all the way home.”

Anxiety About Not Persevering

What about anxiety about not persevering? Do you ever have concerns that you won’t be able to keep believing till the end? That you’re going to make shipwreck of your faith? And the Bible so wants you to not fret about that.

And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ (Philippians 1:6).

He’s going to keep you believing.

I will make with them an everlasting covenant, that I will not turn away from doing good to them. And I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may not turn from me (Jeremiah 32:40).

That’s the new covenant promise that Jesus bought with his blood, and that’s future grace. From now until the day you die, that’s true for you, if you’re in the covenant. That is, if you belong to Jesus Christ, he will put the fear of God in their hearts “that they may not turn from me.”

He won’t let you turn. This is where the sovereignty of God becomes exquisitely precious. If I were to ask you, “Why do you think you’re going to wake up a believer tomorrow morning, instead of waking up an agnostic, or an atheist, or just thinking, ‘I’m done with that. I’m through with that. I tried that, it’s over.’ Why are you not going to wake up believing that, feeling that tomorrow morning? Why not?” Some people have a view of eternal security that just kind of makes it automatic, that you’re some kind of machine, and that you signed a card or prayed a prayer, and now you’re saved. It doesn’t matter what you do, what you feel, or anything. My view of eternal security, which I believe in, is that God is committed to me and he won’t let it happen.

It’s God’s covenant commitment. It’s the faithfulness of God, who says, “I won’t let you turn away from me. You’re in my Son. I put you in my Son.” There have been evidences in my life with the Holy Spirit crying, “Abba Father,” so that I believe he’s my Father. And nobody says, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthans 12:3). And I love the lordship of Jesus over my life. And so, I believe the Holy Spirit is in my life, inclining me this way over and over again. So, I have these evidences that I am born of God, that I belong to the covenant, and then I read a promise, “I won’t ever let you turn from me.” I say, “Okay, I’m not going to lose any sleep tonight over whether I wake up a believer in the morning.” And it has nothing to do with whether I’ve got a strong will. I don’t have a strong will.

Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it;
     Prone to leave the God I love.
Here’s my heart, Lord, take and seal it;
     Seal it for thy courts above.

And he’s done that, so we don’t need to be anxious, thinking, “Yeah, but five years from now, things can be really different.” Well, no. God’s promises remain.

Anxiety About Death

What about anxiety about death? R.C. Sproul said, “I’m not afraid of death, but I am afraid of dying,” meaning, the process can be bleak, it can be ugly. But a lot of people are afraid of death. The reason he’s not afraid of death is that he believes this:

For none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living (Romans 14:7–9).

So, Satan, my enemy, you can take me out of this world, but you can’t take me out of the covenant. You can’t take me out of a relationship with Jesus. I just saw a tweet yesterday from Peter Leithart. He said, “Christians can be martyred; they cannot be victimized.” Okay, that’s good. That’s good. You can kill me, but when you kill me, guess what? I wasn’t your victim. I went straight to glory.

He is the Lord of living and of the dead. The lordship of Jesus is the common denominator of the living and the dead who are in Christ. So, death has ceased to be a destroyer. The sting is gone. It is a doorway into a different kind of experience of the lordship of Jesus. And therefore, though dying may be a terrible prospect that we will have to get through, death need be feared no longer.

Severing the Root of Covetousness

That’s the end of the section on anxiety. Let’s take a few minutes on a few other sins like covetousness. What I’m doing is now trying to illustrate how faith in future grace, the ever-arriving power of God, blood-bought and promised by the Lord Jesus, severs the root of sins. We’ve just talked about severing the root of anxiety by that means, now what about covetousness? This is huge.

I define covetousness as desiring something not for God’s glory, or in such a way that we lose our contentment in God as our supreme treasure. It’s a desire that doesn’t have God’s glory as its aim, and we’re losing our contentment. And here’s my favorite go-to verse when my desires are all out of whack with regard to money, notoriety, attention, or something I’m craving that’s making me miserable because I don’t have it. Hebrews 13:5–6 says:

Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for (here’s his argument) he has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” So we can confidently say,

“The Lord is my helper;
     I will not fear;
     what can man do to me?”

So, you fight against covetousness. You “keep your life free from the love of money,” and you strive to be content. How? By believing this promise: “I will never leave you, I will never forsake you.”

Severing the Root of Lust

Here’s my definition of lust: pursuing elicit thoughts or images in the mind with a view to stimulating sexual pleasures, with or without external stimuli. So, you can have pictures or not. Lust grows out of deception, suppressing the knowledge of God and his promises. There’s a field in which lust grows. It grows when the knowledge of God is being suppressed and his promises are being forgotten, so that they have no effect. Let me show you this. We were praying for South Florida before we walked in here, and Al prayed, and he used the phrase pulsating sensuality.

Man, that rang true for me. It’s not unique to South Florida at all, but it’s so in the media. I mean, I’m old enough that I can remember how I pursued sexual stimulation as a teenager. And you had to work to get it. We had to go fishing for it, and you don’t anymore. It is so ubiquitous. Almost every advertisement, in some way, is appealing to some little glance or some little thought sown about the way she’s dressed, or about the way he’s dressed. It is not just a male issue anymore, and it never has been just a male issue, but today, they say about 30 percent of women are fascinated with pornography. They are often driven by different kinds of impulses than men, but their winding up in similar kinds of disturbances of the soul. So, this is a big deal, and I linger on it because I know we all are tempted.

Put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires . . . (Ephesians 4:22).

I want you to just look at that phrase right there. What is a deceitful desire? It’s a desire that’s lying to you. And the power of this lie is unbelievable. It destroys ministries right and left. It destroys marriages. When you look at what men and women have embraced in believing this lie, you say, “Don’t you see what you’re throwing away? Look at these four precious children, look at this wife, look at this job, what are you doing? It is insane.” Nothing can stop them. The lie has them. It’s like C.S. Lewis’s lizard sitting on his shoulder, lying. It has to be killed.

As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance . . . (1 Peter 1:14).

Passions grow in a field of ignorance. Maybe someone says, “Are you talking about pastors who do this?” Yeah, they do it. And they do it by suppressing the knowledge that they have, because they cannot coincide. They can’t live in the same heart and the same mind. If you know God, if you know the bread, if you’ve drunk from the water, if you’ve seen the beauty, if you’ve tasted the splendor, you cannot spit on it like this. You cannot trample on it like this. You cannot walk away from it and drink from brackish water like this. You have to put it down, get it out of your mind, and not let it into your mind. And therefore, you have to live in an ocean of ignorance in order to flourish with lust.

Abstain from Sexual Immorality

Oh, men, don’t be an ox led to the slaughter like that. Be men. Men know what to kill. They know the enemy — the enemy of their wives, their kids, and themselves. They make war, that’s what men do. They make war on real enemies. And she’s never the enemy. Lust is the enemy.

This is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God . . . (1 Thessalonians 4:3–5).

Do you see the connection? There’s this passion of lust that even wrecks a marriage, that misuses a wife, that treats a wife as a thing. It manipulates a wife, coerces a wife, and has no sensitivities to the wife’s unique, special needs. It’s just like an animal. What are you acting like when you do that? The Gentiles who do not know God.

Knowing God makes all the difference in the world. To have a robust, big, glorious, beautiful knowledge of God, love of God, and treasuring of God, governs your groin and your imagination. It really does. And so, the warfare is to know him, and his promises to be for us all that we need if we say, “No.”

The Most Complete Human Being

I carried on a correspondence for a brief time a long time ago with a guy who was so bent out of shape by something I published in the Star Tribune about not advertising condoms on television. I used the argument that sex is just for marriage anyway, so why would you want to hand them out on Valentine’s day in a high school? And he wrote me and he said, “Who do you think are to tell me that I can’t be fully human, even though I’m not married? That I can’t have the full, complete experience of sexuality that I am? You’re going to tell me I have to be a half-human being just because I’m not married?”

I wrote back to him, and I said, “The fullest, most complete human being that ever walked this planet never had sex, and his name was Jesus. Never. And he went to heaven.” Praise God for singles who are willing to go to heaven like Jesus, never having had sex. Do you think you’re a lesser human if that’s you? What are you saying about Jesus? Jesus is our king, Jesus is our model, and Jesus is our glory. If God doesn’t bring a spouse into your life, Jesus is your calling. Live a beautiful, chaste life, all the way to glory, even if you have same-sex attraction. That’s a beautiful thing to make it all the way to heaven not having acted out on it. We all have different brokenness.

Blessed Are the Pure in Heart

Matthew 5:8 says:

Blessed are the pur in heart, for they shall see God.

Every time you’re tempted to click through to pornography, just preach to yourself, “I’m going to lose my sight of God. I’m already losing it right now in this temptation, but I’m going to lose it. It’ll be defiled. My relationship with him will be sullied because the pure in heart see him. I don’t want to put anything in between us. I want to keep him clear.” Fight for that future grace that God is going to give you, and all of the satisfying glimpses of himself deeper and deeper and deeper than you’ve ever known.

Killing All Kinds of Sin

What about defeating bitterness. There are promises for that. Romans 12:19 says:

Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.”

Do you believe that God will settle all accounts with the people that have wronged you so that you don’t need to? The text says, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay.” You do not need to get the last word in this life. You can let it go because of a promised future grace to you, which is vindication, and future judgment to them if they don’t repent.

Here’s a summary, and I’ll close with this. Grace is all that God promises to be for us in Christ. Faith is being satisfied in that ever-arriving grace. This satisfaction in God defeats the deceitfulness of sin. Love is the result of seeking the fullness of our God-centered satisfaction in the eternal satisfaction of others. And God’s glory is magnified in the manifestation of his grace.

Admit, Pray, Trust, Act, Thank

Let me close by giving you my acronym that I use just before I preach, or do anything where I want to trust future grace. It’s called APTAT.

• A — admit that you can do nothing on your own.

Just put that in front of every act: “I can’t do it, Lord.”

• P — pray for your help.

You pray, “Come according to your promise. Come and help me. Give me what I need for this next activity.”

• T — trust a particular promise.

If you tend to be impatient, trust the promise, “I’m going to work everything for your good here. You don’t need to get bent out of shape. You don’t need to lay on your horn or grumble at the clerk in the store. You don’t need to. I’m going to work it all for good.”

• A — act.

Do what you have to do in reliance upon the arrival of grace that you’ve just prayed for.

• T — thank him.