Welcome to the for the gospel podcast, where we are all about sound doctrine for everyday people. On today's episode, I have a wonderful brother in Christ who's going to talk to us about true happiness and what that actually looks like. Barnabas Piper, welcome to the For the Gospel Podcast, brother. Yeah, thank you for having me on. I'm excited to uh have the conversation. Yeah, I'm grateful. Uh you wrote the book Hoping for Happiness. I had the joyful privilege of getting to write an endorsement for it. It was a really helpful book, and we're going to talk about that book and the concepts within it. But first, I wanted to ask you an update on your ministry. How are things going over there at Emanuel? And what's the latest?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, things are going really well. So I serve, I'm an assistant pastor at Emmanuel Church in Nashville, just on the west side of downtown. And um, you know, it's been a strange year for churches, as you well know, just navigating political upheaval and COVID upheaval and all of the tensions therein. But, you know, God's been really gracious and kind to our church and um have been able to keep meeting other than a few weeks of shutdown a year ago, and have seen new people come in and get introduced to the gospel and get plugged into community. And um, during the midst of COVID, I uh I actually went through the ordination process and got installed. Prior to that, I was serving on staff as a director. So it was it was this weird year of really hard things, but also seeing God continue to bless and move in the church and in my life and ministry. And so yeah, it's been a uh it's been a remarkable, a remarkable last year and one that I'm really grateful for.
SPEAKER_00Man, that is awesome. Yeah, it's fun to watch. I I kept up with the installation and your whole process. Really, really excited and proud of you and pumped. Uh, have you shot a turkey or been out any to do any hunting with Pastor Ray?
SPEAKER_01You know, uh I haven't. And I I'm wondering how long until he like he tells me that that's the next, you know, to grow as a minister, I must don some camo and you know, tote some high-powered firearm to go kill a creature. I'm not opposed. I just it's not my thing, and so I've never done it. But I think I'm the only pastor on staff who hasn't, either with Ray or with TJ, our current senior pastor.
SPEAKER_00Come on, man. Yeah, I I follow uh Pastor Ray on Instagram, and I definitely for the the passion for the gospel and all those great spiritual answers, but really the real reason is to watch his latest hunting excursion.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, his his Instagram is four things. It is the gospel, it is family, it is his dog Nixie, and it is killing animals who are not Nixie. So that's it, that's it. That's the entirety. That is the entirety of his Instagram, which makes him worth following.
SPEAKER_00So absolutely. You only you only kill what you eat. That's what that's all we're endorsing. Don't send me an email. Send all your any angry emails to Barnabas at Emmanuel. Yeah, there you go.
SPEAKER_01I actually have a freezer full of venison because of Ray's both skill with a rifle and generosity. So there's there's a lot of eating that goes on due to that killing. So yeah, pardon any listeners who are offended by this conversation. We live in Middle Tennessee. It's just the norm here.
SPEAKER_00Amen and amen. Well, I love it. Well, let's talk about happiness and some of the wisdom and insights you have on that. The first thing I want to say, I want to swing to an extreme. So we we, you know, I've not been a stranger to dealing with the prosperity gospel and those issues. And we hammer on rightly the idea of happiness through the wrong idea, the wrong motive, the wrong methods, all of that. Um, sort of tongue in cheek, there's a guy named Piper as well, as John Piper, who said something like, marriage isn't just meant to make you happy, but to make you holy. And all of these are good things. I think we need to correct where our happiness is misguided. I think we need to remind young couples and old couples alike that, you know, marriage isn't all about you. God wants to grow you through it. But I want to ask you a question. Does God want us to be happy, or should we feel a sense of guilt and conviction over wanting happiness?
SPEAKER_01It's a really important question because it's kind of the key to unlocking the freedom of conscience. Like, do we feel free as Christians to pursue happiness in in everyday life? Because if God doesn't want us to be happy, it says something about God's character. It also says something about what our priorities should be. I think the short answer is that yes, God does want us to be happy. And I think there's a I think there's a pretty good biblical um defense for this. Um because the Bible doesn't start with Genesis three. You know, Genesis three, there's sin and there's God's disciplining of the world with a curse. And after that, things are not as they ought to be. The Bible starts with Genesis 1 and the repeated refrain as God creates the world, as God created animals and plants and light and whatever, and said, and it was good. So God created a world with the intent of goodness, enjoyment, pleasure. God gave Adam a partner because it was not good for him to be alone. And there was, there's a picture of peace and happiness. And when sin entered the world, the goodness didn't all go away. So there's a it things are twisted, things are not as they ought to be. Nothing fulfills the way that that we, you know, that we would we seek after and would like it to, but you know, we still have friends and laughter and delicious food and good music. And if the the world is full of beauty and good things that are gifts from God, and if he didn't want us to enjoy them, then those things, then it's simply a matter of him being mean. Did God give us all of these enjoyable things simply to taunt us? Absolutely not. So there's a clear depiction that God wants us to enjoy his good gifts in the right way. Like you said, there's a caution on it, but but also, you know, Ecclesiastes says, you know, eat your bread and drink your wine with a glad heart. There's a picture there of these are gifts. Dig in, enjoy them as God intends.
SPEAKER_00Amen. That's so helpful. And I think freeing for people that may carry a burden and feel like, you know, I'm a Christian or I'm a more doctrinally astute Christian, I'm a passionate, you know, about doctrine type of Christian. The more uh tight we get on doctrine, it seems like, I'm not saying it this is a hard and fast rule, it seems like, though, we can get a little wound up and all of a sudden shift into legalism and you know, everything's rigid. And instead of saying, man, here are God's boundaries, here is doctrine, here is tight quarters, if you will, where God says, here it is, take it or leave it, this is my word. And it is a good imperative or a good dogmatic when God says it and now we can follow it. But at the same time, know that within God's boundaries there is so much joy and happiness and freedom and love to be had. What are some dangerous pursuits, if you will, um towards achieving or acquiring happiness? Sort of the the darker side of this conversation.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah, I think it the the short the short answer is when we begin to look to anything in this earth as a fulfilling thing. So, you know, we we're trying to fill up a void of loneliness. And so we turn to to sex or pornography. There's uh, you know, we're trying to fill up the there's a there's an there's a depression or a pain, and so we drown our sorrows in alcohol or food, the where we we essentially turn into gluttons for a thing that is a good gift, but in the appropriate amount and in the appropriate time, like sex is wonderful in God's parameters, you know, in the context of marriage. Food is wonderful when it's not something that we're trying to fill up a soul void, a void in our in our lives. Um, those kinds of things. And so there's that, but but even some of the, you know, we turn to work, trying to find our status, our our identity in what we have achieved. And that's true for people in ministry. I mean, that's not a that's not a purely secular thing, you know, preaching the best sermon, writing the next book, you know, constantly checking the numbers on our podcasts. Uh, you know, I co-host one as well. Like these are temptations. What is kind of climbing the status ladder to feel as if that that's an arrival point. And so, and all of those are efforts at finding happiness, finding fulfillment in what, like you said, kind of the darker side of things. Kind of anything that you can add, uh, an ism. So alcoholism, uh, workaholism, those kinds of things would fit this category. Um, but there, I mean, we can do it to good things as well, but but there's there is just, yeah, we we just we're constantly trying to dull the pain, fill the void with anything we can grasp at. And a lot of those are sinful temptations. Just outright, that's not healthy for us to do those things.
SPEAKER_00It's a good word and so much perspective there. I want to dig a little deeper into that and have you expand further. Chapter three of your book, you talk about weak hooks, you know, hanging our happiness on weak hooks. Uh, maybe it's some of the things you've already talked about a little bit, but the good things that aren't truly the greatest things, can you expand on that as well?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, the the idea of weak hooks, so just to kind of paint the word picture for a listener, um, my family would always get this massive bag at Christmas time from a member in our church, and they worked at 3M. So, you know, 3M makes every office product known to humanity. And it was an it was an awesome gift, like way better than fruitcakes or ugly ties or whatever else pastors get. We just got a massive, like Santa's gift bag full of office stuff. So scotch tape and post-it notes and highlighters and whatever. And so, you know, we'd just be stocked up for the year. But the stuff that was always left at the bottom, like the packing peanuts of the bag, if you will, were always those plastic command hooks, you know, the ones that the little adhesive you stick to the wall. Totally. Which are the most frustrating product I think I've bought consistently. Because you, you know, you you take them out, you put the adhesive on, you stick them to the wall, you hang a picture on it, and inevitably, whether it's five minutes later or five weeks later, you you just are startled out of your shoes by this crash. The picture's on the floor, or the glass is broken, or the broom that you hung on, whatever you hung on, something ends up on the floor because the hook's not strong enough to hold it. And that the hook is designed to hold something, but we always try to hang too much on it. And that's what we end up doing with so many of the good things in our lives, too. So I mentioned work earlier. Work is a good thing. You know, that that is, we were designed to be workers. This is a thing that God has given us to do. You know, whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might. Um we do the same thing with relationships, whether it's a romantic relationship or a friend relationship, those are gifts from God. But when we expect that person to fulfill us. So in a marriage, if your spouse is the one who you're looking to and saying, you make me whole, ooh, we just hung way too much weight on that hook and it's going to collapse. You know, if our if our work or our career is supposed to fulfill us, we've hung way too much weight on that hook. We can even do it with church. You know, church is is a God-designed thing. The local church is the thing that God designed and loves. But we can go into a local church expecting that church to be the perfect church. This is going to fulfill me, it's going to meet every spiritual need. And essentially we're looking to take from it instead of realize that we are participants in it. And so we've hung too much weight on the hook of it's a collection of sinners trying to follow Jesus. You know, we use the phrase at our church, we're stumbling towards Jesus, which is just kind of how we go through life. So if we're expecting that church to fulfill every spiritual need, we hung, we hung too much weight on that hook. And so you and the amazing thing about the human heart, we can do this with any good thing. Any good gift from God, we can expect too much of it, expect it to fulfill in a way that only Christ is supposed to. So Christ fulfills, gives us good gifts for enjoyment to point us to him. But when we take our eyes off of him and look at the gift and say, you fulfill, that's when there's too much weight on that hook and it's gonna crash and it's gonna be painful and messy and leave nothing but disappointment.
SPEAKER_00So powerful and so convicting, I think, no matter where we are uh listening from in our life stage or challenges or mountaintops, valleys, whatever. That is gold, man. Thank you for your wisdom there. Uh, another one, want to talk a little bit about feelings of frustration, anger. Uh, we see this in the church. I'll I'll personalize it, no plural pronouns here. I I see this a lot in the church. Um there are seasons that I've been through where I am just angry, fired up, and uh when I look outward, I can find a lot of problems, and I can find a lot of the culprits, and of course it's everyone else's fault. But then when I get really honest and I flip the mirror back on myself, I could see patterns of sin, patterns of hypocrisy, uh no patterns of love, patterns of uh lost perspective, of too much weight on one side of the scales, etc. Um you unpack this in one of your chapters, happiness and holiness, and it's in a big and holiness. Talk about holiness, and I have a blunt question for you. In your pastoral mind or viewpoint, are some Christians miserable and angry because they lack holiness in their life, even if they're they look real, you know, suit and tie, tied up. Are is there a lot going on under the surface that you see pastorally? And we got to get honest about our holiness and realize that is one of the biggest culprits in our misery and our anger and hypocrisy.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I I think that's a I think it's a it's an insightful question because of what it diagnoses in. I mean, you talk, you you spoke in the first person, and I could I could give the same, you know, litany of experiences. Anger comes easily for me. Um, you know, I think some people are are prone to sadness or kind of being low. I'm prone to kind of getting heated, uh, more lashing out than turning inward. That's almost always an indication that I am not resting in seeking wholeness in finding peace in the reality of Jesus Christ and his gospel. And that's not just a spiritual sort of like that's not that's not a cheap phrase. That's a that's a genuine, this the we are a whole person when we find our identity in Christ, when that when the peace is there. So for for the the person who's just lashing out on social media, who is prone to anger, who is, you know, always always kind of on edge. Um, I'm gonna quote, I'm gonna do my best to quote Yoda here because I think I think Star Wars actually speaks to this. Um, fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, uh, the wise little green man once said. And uh and I think that's true. The anger comes from some sense of fear, a fear of something that's outside our control, a fear of um, this isn't gonna go the way I want. The wrong president is gonna sit in the White House, uh, COVID's gonna ruin everything. Uh, whatever. Pick your favorite thing that people are angry about. That theology is gonna ruin the church. And that kind of anger stemming from that kind of fear is basically a declaration that I am not trusting that God has this. I am not trusting that God is in control. So, back to the question about holiness. If we are that kind of angry, stemming from that kind of fear, it means we have taken our eye off of Christ, who said it is finished. He said, I won. There is peace in that. There's there is a there's a there's a fulfillment of soul that says, Yes, there are things that are wrong in this world, but also breathe easy because I'm coming back, and Revelation 21 is gonna happen, and I will make all things new, and I'm gonna wipe away every tear. So be still and know that I am God. And uh and so, yeah, the the lack of holiness, the lack of pursuing of Jesus Christ is only like one or two steps from that sort of angsty anger, even hatred and and kind of vitriol that we see pretty rampant, especially on the internet, but even within our churches.
SPEAKER_00So good, so good. What can you provide for us as far as wisdom and insight and perspective when it comes to righteous anger? Because even, you know, it wasn't a question that I was thinking of asking you, but as you brought all that up, it it's so helpful. But on the flip side to that, because you said if it's that kind of anger, then we've taken our eyes off Christ. What about righteous anger? And in the midst of waiting for our living hope to be a reality when Christ returns, um, how would how would you encourage somebody to exhibit a righteous anger? Or maybe what are some things that we're allowed to be righteously angry about and then not continuing in sin?
SPEAKER_01And and righteous anger is absolutely a biblical thing. Like that is um that is that's a category that it that exists. And Paul says, you know, be angry and do not sin. So I don't know how to do that very well. I'm very good at being angry and sinning. That that comes very naturally to me. Being angry and not sinning is, I think, that's the pursuit of holiness for me in a lot of ways. But actually, in our in in the sermon that TJ Timms, our senior pastor, preached most recently, um he's preaching on it, we're preaching through Mark. And it was, it's the story of Jesus healing the man with the withered hand and the the hard-heartedness of the Pharisees. And it says that Jesus was angry at their hard hearts and grieved simultaneously. I think that is indicative of what of what righteous anger should look like, because there is an anger at the sheer evil of these of the world wants to see destruction happen. In this case, it was the Pharisees. The Pharisees did not care about the man with the withered hand. They cared about their power, their status, they wanted to be lords of the Sabbath, etc. And Jesus was angry at that and he was grieved, uh, which means that he yearned for something better. He didn't yearn for their destruction. He he didn't call down a legion of angels like he says he could at you know at a different point in the gospels. He yearned for righteousness, wholeness, the the beauty of his character being reflected. And and I think I think that is obviously it's instructive, it's Jesus. But if our anger does not come with is not tempered by grief, because grief is usually gentle. Grief is usually not a thing that lashes out to hurt, it's a thing that wishes for something better. Um, and then I think about and then I think about Romans where where Paul talks about vengeance is the Lord's. If our anger leads us to a desire for vengeance of our making, it's not righteous anger. If our anger leads us to, so I will put this in God's hands because he's gonna handle this better than I could, it's it leans closer to righteous anger. So those are just sort of some categories that I have, I have to constantly think through because I want to lash out. I want to set somebody straight, I want to put somebody in their place, none of which is a righteous instinct, because it's not grief and it's not letting the Lord be the Lord. It's not getting out of, I need to get out of his way and say, if there's vengeance here, it's in your hands. I'm I'm not I'm not the ruler of this thing.
SPEAKER_00Amen and amen. Another one. I had a mentor, uh, still uh one of my best friends on planet earth. Uh, tell me frequently, because I would get pretty frustrated at things early on in ministry, still do. Haven't completely conquered that one. But expectations breed frustration. And we could say in almost every facet of life, if not every facet of life, expectations will breed frustration. What are some things that people expect and or what would your pastoral encouragement be in the midst of expectations that breed a lot of our our unhappiness? Yeah, I
SPEAKER_01That that's your mentor was just so spot on with that. Cause I think one of the things I wrote in the book is that every disappointment is an unmet expectation. So any twinge of disappointment we have means at some level, whether we realize it or not, we expected a different outcome. You know, you take a sip of coffee and it's lukewarm, you feel a little bit disappointed. What's because you thought it was going to be like piping hot? You know, there's just a, there's, there's, there's these, it's it's just rampant across life. I think, I think the expectations that people have that lead to disappointment are always ones that are not based in biblical reality. The moment our expectations are not based in biblical reality, we we're just setting ourselves up for frustration. And so biblical reality is a, you know, the nice, concise phrase that probably doesn't mean anything clear to people. So here's here's what I mean. I mentioned earlier the Genesis 1 and Genesis 3 thing. It is a good world under a curse. That means that nothing will completely work out the way that we anticipate it working out in this life. Nothing is going to be perfectly smooth. So does that mean we just punt expectations and go, man, life sucks? No, because it doesn't. It doesn't have to, but it does mean that we go into it saying good gifts, also a sinful world. This we don't have pie in the sky notions of spiritual holiness in seven minutes. You know, the idea every man who has ever struggled with sexual sin of any kind, lust, pornography, whatever, has had this experience. They commit the sin, they feel shame, they confess, they recognize forgiveness, and they swear they will never do it again. And they're flying high for anywhere between five minutes and five days. But then reality sets in because they had the expectation of instantaneous holiness instead of I'm gonna fight this thing, and I'm gonna fight this thing, and I'm gonna fight this thing, and in the power of the Lord, I'm gonna, I'm gonna gain ground. And the same is true in marriage. That there's a like the honeymoon can be a week long, it can be a year long. There's gonna come points of difficulty.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01Points of points of conflict, points of the affections wane, points of we're just not pulling the same direction in life. We need to we need to work this thing out. Okay, what did you expect? And I think Paul Tripp has a book called What Did You Expect? You know, which is which is really this. It's like, what did you think was gonna happen when you married somebody else who's a sinner? And that doesn't mean marriage is bad. It just means there's an expectation of there's there's gonna be work that goes into this, there's gonna be trials, there's also gonna be love and affection and unity and growth. And I think so, so biblical reality is understanding the nature of the world and the nature of who God is. What has God said is is the right thing to pursue, what is the right thing to expect out of life. And and so, so many of the big disappointments we have are when we've determined what life should look like rather than listening to what God says life is going to look like. You know, Jesus says, in this life you will have trouble. That's worth remembering because it means when trouble comes, we're like, ah, yes, we were warned about this. This is not the end of the world. It doesn't mean my life is crumbled. It doesn't mean that I have failed. It means we still live in a fallen world. And then it also means that we raise our eyes to an expectation above those, which is in spite of any trouble, we have the expectation that Jesus is Lord, He's He sits on the throne, He's going to return. And so there's a there's a reality, the biblical reality that surrounds the troubles that is one of peace and God's sovereignty.
SPEAKER_00So good. I want to take you one last place, uh, maybe one more place after that as well. But overall, uh, you talk about in your in your book, uh, it's on page 90, this whole section about happiness and death. I think of that often and how death is the great equalizer. It, you know, there's no U-Haul behind the hearse, it's coming for you. The reality of death is something I think we try to avoid a lot in the church, and we shouldn't. But can you unpack some of those truths that you were trying to express and you did a great job expressing of living in light of death in a way sort of a very weird way to live, but something that can help with our happiness and our perspective?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that that chapter it was probably that was probably the thing that that caught me off guard the most as I as I prepared to write the book, just in terms, especially studying Ecclesiastes, which is where a lot of the ideas in the book came out of, was the reality that death has the potential to frame our happiness in an even healthier way. You know, I mentioned a moment ago this idea of biblical reality. Well, part of biblical reality is the reality of death. You know, we have a number of years, could be 30, could be 60, could be 110. We have a window of time that God has given us. And that's an important phrase. God has given us. This is a gift that we have. And so it should shape how we live life. It should shape the intensity with which we live life. Are we maximizing our 110 years, if you're really lucky, or 72 years, or whatever it is? And maximizing doesn't mean accomplishing, it means think of it as stewardship. God has given you this. What are you going to do with it that's fruitful, relationally fruitful, experientially fruitful, ministerially fruitful, following Jesus fruitful? There's a, we do we just have this window. And so it really helps. So let me put it this way: when you walk into a McDonald's, you do not expect the chef to give you a medium rare filet mignon with like perfect sides, the cream spinach, the the you know, the potatoes, the whatever. Like you just want a crappy cheeseburger. That's what McDonald's offers. When you walk into like a Ruth Chris steakhouse or something, the expectations change. When we live without death in mind, we're expecting a phileman from McDonald's. When we live with death in mind, we this is the life we have. And that's not, yes, there's a ceiling on it, but also as Christians, there's not, there's not a ceiling on it. This is life now, and then there's life eternal. And one walks right into the next. And so Ecclesiastes, again, I'm going to keep beating that drum, has this amazing juxtaposition of life under the sun. That's a time frame. The sun rises, the sun sets. This is the span of our days. And then there's life above the sun. That's life beyond. So we live life under the sun with an eye on life above the sun, and it it shapes everything about life now in a fruitful, meaningful, and ultimately happy way. Because even if this life is hard, which it is for many of us, life above the sun is joyful. And so, so there's it just it reframes everything to live with death in mind.
SPEAKER_00Man, you're this just came to mind as I'm thinking through what you're saying. You are so bad for business, the business of earthly perspective, that what you're saying is just it's convicting. I was uh looking at some of the notes that I had made uh in your book, and you said if we're trying to hide from death, life will be dominated by these good things as distractions or numbing agents or idols. But if we live with the end in mind, we'll see life as a precious resource, one to be soaked up, shared, and spent in a way that pleases our Creator and prepares us for the next life and brings others with us into that life. You're bad for the business of earthly perspective, man. Honestly, everything you're saying it there at the end is so helpful and convicting because it begins to derail my current anger with the culture. It begins to derail my uh relentless pursuit of materialism to fill the holes in my heart. It absolutely derails my pursuit of marriage as something that exists for me, or my children to fulfill me and I live vicariously through them, and my church to be all things that I need it to be, and for everyone to hear me roar and you know yell at yell at the the grocery store or the the shop owner about you know, mask or no mask, and scream at the neighbors over their sign on their yard and yell about this, it just derails all of that, and it forces me to think of what is to come. And I'll tell you what, uh you know, that's a struggle. Would you say pastorally in this season, people would much rather be blown by the winds of their emotions in the crazy world we're living in?
SPEAKER_01Oh, absolutely, and the idea of living with death in mind sounds morose to people. Nobody wants to be morose, but it's morose if all you think about is well, that's the end, but it's not like that's that's that's not a Christian perspective. And so to I I owe that we would all be terrible for the business of worldly pleasures. And again, I said earlier, these are good gifts from God. So this doesn't mean that thinking living with the end in mind means living an ascetic life or living a miserable life or kind of self-flagellation. I'm just gonna, I'm gonna remove all pleasures from my life. It means that the pleasures all point to the end. The pleasures all say, look, if you enjoyed this bacon this much right now, how much better will heaven be? If your evening spent laughing until your ribs hurt with friends was that much that enjoyable, how much more perfect fellowship forever? Like everything echoes forward, and so it maximizes the enjoyment. It doesn't minimize it. Whereas when that's all we've got, all we're left with at the end of a meal or the end of hanging out with friends is emptiness because that's over. We'll never get that back. But if it echoes forward, we're getting it back in spades.
SPEAKER_00Oh, it's beautiful, beautiful perspective. Helps me to pray more and even have a little more compassion for my unbelieving friends and family who are they they wrestle with death, they hate the idea of the party ending, they are depressed when the visit with the friends or the family or the the dinner is over, and helps me to have more gospel compassion, more gospel perspective. I think that is what your book points to, and it is probably the the crescendo of it all is what is to come. And then now we want to go out and live on Monday through Saturday, not just Sunday, taking people through that reality and wanting them to be in glory with us. Can you finish sort of with the the reminder of the gospel and all of this and encourage people to live their life for the gospel? Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um how to sum up. I think I think a mistake we can make as Christians is to detach the gospel, is to make the gospel a message of salvation only. The gospel is for getting saved rather than the gospel being the ongoing good news of the reality of Jesus Christ. So it's not just the thing that Jesus did that gets you saved full stop. It is that's the entry point. Then we get to live in that reality. So this is this is the peace and the fulfillment and the happiness in Christ as we look towards ultimate, ultimate glorification with Christ, Christ's return. When so he said it was finished at the cross, and it is. But he's got to come back and finish, finish it. So it's finished, but he's gonna finish, finish it. And and so we we live with that in mind. We live between those two things. And and so there are there are the troubles that Jesus promised, but there's also the I will never leave you or forsake you. There's the it is finished. There's the there's the promises to come. And so living in the reality of the gospel daily, the gospel being the good news of what Jesus has done and is doing for us through his Holy Spirit today, tomorrow, and for the rest of our lives is an entirely different thing than living in light of the gospel got me saved, and now I've just got to plod. We're not just waiting until heaven or waiting until Jesus comes back. We we live in full, at full sprint until our days are up, and then we sprint right on into eternity. And I think that's that's how the gospel shapes this like this this understanding of happiness and fulfilled life because it's in the power of Christ, in the power of the spirit as we live out our days.
SPEAKER_00Man, thank you so much for for being on. Thank you for your wisdom and thanks for writing the book, brother.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, grateful to grateful to have written it and so encouraged by the questions that you asked. I hope this was uplifting to people and pointing people to Christ.
SPEAKER_00Amen. Amen. That's what we're all about. Uh, to our listeners, I want to tell you keep an eye on social media in the coming weeks. We are going to be giving away several copies of Barnabas Piper's book, Hoping for Happiness. And if you don't want to wait, I don't blame you. It's a short book, an easy read, uh, forward by another friend of ours, Randy Alcorn, who's been a guest on the podcast. So if you don't want to wait, I understand. Or if you don't like the odds of competing with 10,000 people for book giveaways, I understand. So go to Amazon and just order those for yourself, your church, your small group. Uh, and we are excited to see that book get in your hands. Thank you so much for listening. Uh, for more, go to forthegospel.org and we'll see you on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, and our YouTube channel where our new Fused Family series is out. There's loads of free gospel videos on there. We'll be back next Monday with another episode. Keep living for the gospel and pursuing your happiness in the gospel.