{"id":55,"date":"2006-01-12T13:04:00","date_gmt":"2006-01-12T17:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rayvanneste.com\/?p=55"},"modified":"2013-07-03T13:50:17","modified_gmt":"2013-07-03T17:50:17","slug":"john-piper%e2%80%99s-letter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rayvanneste.com\/?p=55","title":{"rendered":"John Piper&#8217;s Letter"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I am sure you are well aware by now of John Piper&#8217;s cancer. It has been good to see so many expressing concern and praying. I want to point out here his <a href=\"http:\/\/www.desiringgod.org\/news_events\/dgm_news\/2006\/20060106_cancer_announcement.html\">letter to his church<\/a> which announced the cancer. You may have already read it. When I read it last week I was especially struck with his discussion of how and why this was good for him and for the church. He writes:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>This news has, of course, been good for me. The most dangerous thing in the world is the sin of self-reliance and the stupor of worldliness. The news of cancer has a wonderfully blasting effect on both. I thank God for that. The times with Christ in these days have been unusually sweet.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>When I first read the letter, I was lost at first for the referent to &#8220;this news.&#8221; I wondered if it was referring to the immediately preceding paragraph about recovery time, etc. Then as I read on I understood he meant that the news of having cancer was good for him! To say that in such sincerity is a powerful example of grace at work and maturity lived out. This letter is a good example of pastoral leadership in the midst of difficulty and suffering. Here is a model for us to learn from.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I am sure you are well aware by now of John Piper&#8217;s cancer. It has been good to see so many expressing concern and praying. I want to point out here his letter to his church which announced the cancer. You may have already read it. When I read it last week I was especially &#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/rayvanneste.com\/?p=55\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading &lsquo;John Piper&#8217;s Letter&rsquo; &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rayvanneste.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rayvanneste.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rayvanneste.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rayvanneste.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rayvanneste.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/rayvanneste.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3934,"href":"http:\/\/rayvanneste.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55\/revisions\/3934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rayvanneste.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rayvanneste.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rayvanneste.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}