It was another full week of Ask Pastor John podcasts, covering a range of topics: biblical womanhood, hip hop, how to parent gender development, and advice for unemployed college grads. Here are excerpts from the five new episodes. Click on the hyperlinked titles to listen or download.

What Do You Think of Your Influence On Christian Hip Hop? (Episode 68):

A lot of hip hop lyrics are stories. They move with a narrative which gives it an advantage of telling a story about someone’s experience or the movement of the history of redemption. Another factor about it that gives it remarkable clout, I think, is what I call linguistic energy. The hip hop I listen to is phenomenally energetic, it is drivenly energetic. Life is war and that sounds like the kind of energy it takes to push back the enemy ... And that may also be one limitation of hip hop.

The Parent’s Role in a Child’s Gender Development (Episode 67):

Deuteronomy 11:19–20: “You shall teach them to your children, talking of them when you are sitting in your house, and when you are walking by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” That is a description of pervasive, Word-saturated guidance and inspiration and encouragement for our children. No thought of laissez-faire, let them grow up and discover what is right and wrong for themselves. They will be influenced by somebody, and God calls parents to love their children enough to shape them.

Wimpy Theology Makes Wimpy Women (Episode 66):

At Bethlehem, in the last 32 years, one of the deeply gratifying things for me is that alongside a spiritually mature, biblically informed, humble, Christlike male eldership, there has risen up an army of intelligent, articulate, mature, Bible-saturated, God-centered, Christ-exalting, strong women who partner with the men of the church to get the ministry of family and society done. And that happens because we don’t think in terms of ‘men should be taught deep, rich, solid, life transforming theology, and women, they should be taught something else.’ No way. They both should be thinking, meditating, reading, and going. They both have brains — in fact women’s brains are usually sharper.

What Is “Strong Feminine Womanhood”? (Episode 65):

[Proverbs 31:25] has got to be one of my favorite verses in all of the Bible. A woman laughing at the time to come is not a woman who is looking at her biceps and getting encouragement. She is looking at her God and getting encouragement, because the time to come is a time of trouble. It is a time of unknown. Her biceps are not going to help her. She may be carrying kindling or carrying the pots or doing whatever they did in that culture, but she knows that if the Amorites would sweep across, or if a flood comes, or if a horrible plague comes, it is only her great God, laid hold of by faith, and becoming strong in him, that is going to make the difference.

Advice for Discouraged, Unemployed College Grads (Episode 64):

God’s closings are his plannings. You may be puzzled; he is planning. You may feel delayed; God is designing. Trust him.

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 downloaded 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.