Barnabas Piper > Quotes

“They want the PK to dress like a grandparent and behave like Jesus. But they also seem to wait for the time when the pastor’s daughter makes out and the son drinks beer.”
― Barnabas Piper, The Pastor's Kid: Finding Your Own Faith and Identity

“I would rather live in a world where my life is surrounded by mystery than live in a world so small that my mind could comprehend it.1”
― Barnabas Piper, Help My Unbelief: Why Doubt Is Not the Enemy of Faith

“some people assume all is well, that the PK has it all together. They’re usually wrong; remember, PKs are as human as everyone else.”
― Barnabas Piper, The Pastor's Kid: Finding Your Own Faith and Identity

“Because being a PK can be very much like living in a pressure cooker. Even though we look just like the other kids and the ingredients are the same, our atmosphere is subtly but massively different. The ministry creates a pressure of expectation that is unlike any other. If all the other kids are cooking at 212 degrees (rather a challenge all its own), we are cooking at a scalding 250 pressurized degrees, and we are reaching our “done” point that much faster.”
― Barnabas Piper, The Pastor's Kid: Finding Your Own Faith and Identity

“trust in God stems from understanding His character, not His reasons.”
― Barnabas Piper, Help My Unbelief: Why Doubt Is Not the Enemy of Faith

“God is infinite. While the finite human mind can understand aspects of His character, even those cannot be understood in full. His bigness is too big, His goodness too good, His wrath too terrible, His grace too profound, His knowledge too deep. Because of this, God is inherently mysterious to us. We simply cannot fathom the fullness, or even a portion of the fullness, of who He is or what He does.”
― Barnabas Piper, Help My Unbelief: Why Doubt Is Not the Enemy of Faith

“Christians who don't know the tension of "I believe; help my unbelief" might not be Christians at all, or at the least they might be very infantile ones. Our faith is one of brutal tensions. Not everyone can express this, but every Christian knows it. We feel it in our guts. We feel as if we're going to bust in half as we're pulled in two directions at once. To not recognize the significance of these words indicates a simplistic, thoughtless belief. It isn't a mark of maturity but rather of not being mature enough to know our own weakness and need. Tension is our state of being for all of this life, and to live as a believer is to live in it.”
― Barnabas Piper, Help My Unbelief: Why Doubt Is Not the Enemy of Faith

“It is so hard to believe because it is so hard to obey.1 —Søren Kierkegaard”
― Barnabas Piper, Help My Unbelief: Why Doubt Is Not the Enemy of Faith

“If we could store God in a box, what about Him would be worthy of worship?”
― Barnabas Piper, Help My Unbelief: Why Doubt Is Not the Enemy of Faith

“To live by faith is to rest in the object of our faith, the God of the Bible, and to come to terms with all of our “I don’t knows.”
― Barnabas Piper, Help My Unbelief: Why Doubt Is Not the Enemy of Faith

“Questions are the conversational currency of a child. Every question is asked to learn, out of a desire to understand, from a stance of trust. Children ask not to challenge but in order to believe. That's a big part of what "faith like a child" means.”
― Barnabas Piper, Help My Unbelief: Why Doubt Is Not the Enemy of Faith

“A child doesn’t know the call of his pastor father. All he knows is the effects it has on his life.”
― Barnabas Piper, The Pastor's Kid: Finding Your Own Faith and Identity

“Without grace there is no hope, but with it there is no shortage.”
― Barnabas Piper, The Pastor's Kid: Finding Your Own Faith and Identity

“There is an inherent promise of peace in living the life you ought, in living as you were created to be, in honoring what is good.”
― Barnabas Piper, Help My Unbelief: Why Doubt Is Not the Enemy of Faith

“some people assume all is well, that the PK has it all together. They’re usually wrong; remember,”
― Barnabas Piper, The Pastor's Kid: Finding Your Own Faith and Identity

“To all who are weary and need rest;
To all who mourn and long for comfort;
To all who fail and need strength;
To all who sin and need a Savior;
This church opens wide her doors and her heart with a welcome from Jesus Christ.”
― Barnabas Piper, Belong: Loving Your Church by Reflecting Christ to One Another

“It's cheaper to drive on long trips with two children than it is to fly, so that's how my family usually travels. Inevitably, about an hour into an eight-hour drive, one of our daughters asks, "Are we there yet?" It's as if kids don't notice that we're driving freeway speeds with no sign of stopping. Christians live "Are we there yet?" lives. In its entirety, life is a state of traveling toward a destination. We are pursuing holiness and growth. We are seeking to become more like Christ, to live lives that reflect and honor God. But we live in a fallen state marked by sin. It often feels as if we are spinning our wheels rather than making progress, the same way children feel in the backseat.”
― Barnabas Piper, Help My Unbelief: Why Doubt Is Not the Enemy of Faith

“The moment we recognize our difficulties, no matter whose fault they are, we must own them and take steps to change them.”
― Barnabas Piper, The Pastor's Kid: Finding Your Own Faith and Identity

“Relational knowledge of God leads to transformational, living belief.”
― Barnabas Piper, Help My Unbelief: Why Doubt Is Not the Enemy of Faith

“Doubt is not the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith.[32] —Paul Tillich”
― Barnabas Piper, Help My Unbelief: Why doubt is not the enemy of faith

“Folks in the church just glean things about the PK’s life from sermon illustrations (and pastors wonder why kids hate being used in sermons) or from a conversation here and a passing comment there.”
― Barnabas Piper, The Pastor's Kid: Finding Your Own Faith and Identity

“You know what the book of Job doesn’t do? It doesn’t explain anything. But even without explanations or rationales it does answer our questions. God is God. We are not. Be silent.”
― Barnabas Piper, Help My Unbelief: Why doubt is not the enemy of faith

“Hebrews tells us that “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”13 We hope; we don’t see.”
― Barnabas Piper, Help My Unbelief: Why Doubt Is Not the Enemy of Faith

“The call of the father is not the call of the child, but the ministry of the father creates an anvil-like weight on the child. He just feels the pressure of it. Even the best pastoral parents can’t protect their kids from this. And it is this pressure, in part, that drives so many PKs to break.”
― Barnabas Piper, The Pastor's Kid: Finding Your Own Faith and Identity

“Our salvation is on the cross. No matter how broken we may be, no matter how much we might struggle and fail to see and to know the truth (every truth) clearly, we can rest in the One who sees all and knows all.”
― Barnabas Piper, Help My Unbelief: Why Doubt Is Not the Enemy of Faith

“Book knowledge of God, if left at that, leads to hollow belief in God.”
― Barnabas Piper, Help My Unbelief: Why Doubt Is Not the Enemy of Faith

“If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.10 —C. S. Lewis”
― Barnabas Piper, Help My Unbelief: Why Doubt Is Not the Enemy of Faith

“And, of course, it is true for the wife and mother, watching, with tears, the drama play out between her son and husband, or bearing the weight of her daughter’s rejection.”
― Barnabas Piper, The Pastor's Kid: Finding Your Own Faith and Identity

“short, he must exhibit every spiritual gift God intended to be dispersed throughout the entire church.”
― Barnabas Piper, The Pastor's Kid: Finding Your Own Faith and Identity

“Our king came and ushered in His kingdom but then left with a promise of His return. So we wait.”
― Barnabas Piper, Help My Unbelief: Why Doubt Is Not the Enemy of Faith