Five new episodes of the Ask Pastor John podcast were released this week. Here's a list of brief excerpts from each episode (click on the titles to listen).

How Far Is Too Far Before Marriage? (Episode 73):

I would say to the women, don’t entice a man to touch you thinking that this is the way to keep a man. He is not worth keeping if that is the way he is kept. And feel free to say to any man, “No, please don’t take us there.” And you can discern what kind of a man you are dealing with by how sensitive he is to that dimension of purity.

“Blessed are the pure in heart, they will see God” [Matthew 5:8]. That is what we want. We want to see God. . . . If a single person is listening to this saying, “Oh, all very nice. I’m not married, and there is nobody on the horizon. What am I supposed to do?” I just want to say one thing. Don’t feel second class. Jesus Christ is the most complete human being whoever lived and he never had sex. Not to be married and not to have sex is not to be an incomplete human being.

What Is the Purpose of Fasting? (Episode 72):

Fasting is a physical exclamation point at the end of the sentence, “I need you. I want you. I long for you. You are my treasure. I want more of you. And, oh, for the day when you would return. Maranatha, come, Lord Jesus!” Fasting is the exclamation point at the end of all those sentences. . . . I think fasting is not only a positive statement, but it is also a negative way of exposing latent idolatries. When I am not being medicated by food what comes out of my heart? Anger? Lust? The need for television, and more and more of it, or something like that? People need to know what is at the bottom.

Do Christians and Muslims Worship the Same Deity? (Episode 71):

I don’t care how many attributes line up between your god and mine. Jesus says you can’t be worshipping the Father if you are rejecting him [in the Son]. And that is the approach I think we should take with all Muslims. We should befriend all of the Muslims in our lives and there are many, at least in my neighborhood. And we tell them the unsearchable riches of Christ, and especially go to the gospel where the glory of God is revealed in the death and the resurrection of Christ.

Was Jesus for Real? (Episode 70):

The approach C. S. Lewis helped me so much with, and he taught thousands: liar, lunatic, or Lord? . . . Jesus is either crazy, or he is a liar, or he is Lord. And as you get to know Jesus you just can’t with any integrity say he is a liar or he is a charlatan trying to pull the wool over people’s eyes. And so people are confronted when they read the gospels with this question: Is this man true? Is he a liar? Is he a lunatic?

Is Jesus the Only Way to Be Saved? (Episode 69):

Jesus, it seems to me, makes the embrace of himself as the crucified and risen Messiah the litmus test of other religions. So if you are talking with somebody who has their set of religions and you want to test to see whether they have saving faith, what you do is you put Jesus and his fullness out on the table for them to see if they will embrace Jesus.

Tuning In

The Ask Pastor John daily podcast is a series of 3–8 minute conversations released on weekdays at 11am (EST) via the DG Facebook and Twitter feeds. You can tune in to the new episodes through the new Ask Pastor John iPhone app, which can be donwloaded for free here. We’re currently hosting all the recordings on SoundCloud, a website that makes it easy to listen to several of the podcasts in one sitting. They’re also archived on the DG website and syndicated in iTunes.

We want to hear from you. To submit a question to Pastor John please include your first name, hometown, and question in an email to AskPastorJohn AT desiringGod DOT org.

Thanks for listening to the podcasts. We appreciate your engagement and interest.