What would you say to someone
who faithfully, regularly is listening
to your sermons on the Internet,
but they are not regularly and faithfully
being in the Word of God and in prayer?
Paul: Then hearing you are not hearing,
and seeing you are not seeing.
Again, listen, all men are fallible.
There's no such thing as a great man of God,
just wicked, tiny, pitiful men
of a great and merciful God
and so on and so forth.
You can't live your life based upon
the reality of other people.
I greatly admire men like John Piper,
but I can't live on John Piper.
I can't live in some parasitic relationship
in which he hears from God
and I feed off of him.
I have to go to the Word.
I have to know God.
I have to experience these truths.
One of the greatest maladies,
and a thing that's quite ridiculous
that I see today
is when I see a young man take a sermon
from someone like John Piper
and preach it word for word,
because not that the truth isn't important,
but I can tell in a second.
When that comes out of Dr. Piper's mouth, it's a reality.
When it comes out of that young man's mouth,
it's like a parrot talking to me.
It's not a reality.
It's not something he's experienced.
They need to get in the Word and prayer.
Lock themselves away.
Let me say this,
when I first was called into the ministry,
my pastor who was a very godly man,
who walked with God,
he looked at me one day and he said,
"Boy, can you be alone?"
When he said that I thought he meant
that if I preached the truth, I would be alone.
That's not what he meant.
What he meant was this:
When all the other boys are
going on Christian retreats
and hanging around in bachelor packs
and going to Christian conferences
and everything else,
can you go into the closet alone
and be with God?
Can you go to your study
and be alone with God?
One of the things that you're going to have to realize,
the young men who aspire to be used of God,
is you're going to have to be a man
who walks with God.
And not even your closest friends can come with you.
Not your wife. No one.
You walk with God
in the Word of God and prayer.
Question: Kind of as a follow-up question,
is it possible for someone
to get so caught up in the personality
or the ministry of a preacher,
that they're more caught up with that man
than they are with Jesus Christ Himself?
Paul: Definitely.
That's the case with me.
I hope that I am preaching the truth.
I trust that I'm saying things
that are important,
but I realize, it's just like David.
Do you realize that the first people
who aligned themselves with David,
they aligned themselves with David
just because they were mad at Saul?
There are young men particularly out there today,
they're mad at everything they see in Christianity.
So the first supposed radical voice
and radical life they see,
they want to latch on to that.
That's very, very dangerous.
You see, the whole thing
that we need to look at here
is truth and character.
The idea of someone being radical;
the idea of someone being zealous,
to latch yourself onto a person like that
because they seem that way is very dangerous.
Very dangerous.
Question: Is it possible for someone
to love the preaching ministry
of someone like yourself or John Piper
and still be lost?
Paul: Oh yes, it is very possible.
It is very, very, very possible.
You can become mesmerized
by so many things.
But you have to ask yourself,
do I love Christ?
Do I desire Christ?
Some people like to hear preaching
just because it's radical
and they want to be radical.
I know of a girl
who literally was on her way to hell
because she would not surrender to Christ
and she would not surrender her life to Christ
because she was afraid
that if she surrendered her life to Christ
He would not let her be a missionary.
Anything can send you to hell.
You know a lot of people
do really look at you as a celebrity
I don't know if there's anything you want to say
to address people out there who do that
because it does need to be addressed?
And who better than you?
Paul: Okay.
A few years ago, I was preaching up in a place,
and I had chosen that that week
I was going to teach on the Old Testament.
Many, many people came to hear me preach.
Many people came to hear me preach.
And the church filled up.
There were seats put out and everything.
And when I got up to preach the first sermon,
I looked over to my right,
and there seated was a man nobody knew.
A Hebrew professor from India.
And I knew something about him.
And it just struck me as so ironic.
First of all, he was very, very godly.
Very godly husband,
very godly father.
He has forgotten more about God
and the Old Testament than I'll ever know.
I was terrified to think that he was in the audience
and was going to hear me preach on the Old Testament.
And the ironic thing is this,
(incomplete thought)
oftentimes it is not the man
of highest character or the greatest nobility
or the greatest knowledge that God uses.
And many times, those who've been
called to go out front,
one of their greatest burdens and chains
is they know that there are men
that they're not worthy to carry their sandals
who are sitting there in the audience
and no one knows their name,
and yet they're far more the man of God
than the one speaking in the pulpit.
God uses the ignoble.
He uses the weak.
Another thing, I know that -
I believe God has used me,
but it's been for a certain purpose.
To cry out that things are wrong.
But I know that's what I am.
I am not a John Piper.
I'm not the great expositor.
I don't have the mind of an R.C. Sproul.
I am what I am.
And God will sometimes use people like me.
We're limited, but we are used.
Another thing I think is a very, very good story
is I preached in a place one time
and a genuine revival broke out.
And I don't use that term lightly.
Some people were being converted.
Other people were fiercely angry,
threw things at my wife and I
as we walked across the campus.
But a revival broke out.
And afterwards, some of the young Bible students
came up to me and said,
"Mr. Washer, can we go to Peru with you?"
I said, well, you can come and visit me.
So, when they got off that plane in Lima,
they thought I was the Apostle Paul.
When they got back on that plane
a month and a half later,
they were praying for my salvation.
The point I'm trying to make
is I hope I'm not a hypocrite,
and I hope that I sincerely want to follow Christ,
that I really want to follow Jesus.
And that they didn't see someone who was fake,
but all they saw was just what all men are.
You know, a man is what his wife sees.
A man is what the closest people to him know.
And all they saw was a person
by the grace of God
seeking to follow Jesus
whom God had helped in certain labors.
I try to study the Word every day,
systematically reading through the Bible.
That's my devotional time.
To pray, to be on my knees
in the morning watch,
to be on my knees in the night watch
before I go to bed.
Or if He wakes me, to be a watchman.
But I struggle -
I struggle in Scripture memory a lot.
I try to memorize Scripture,
and I think my 8 year old's better at it than I am.
I struggle a great deal at times
with depression, but I am getting
greater and greater victory over that
because of some of the truths
that I learned from Jay Adams actually.
Just men... sometimes I have to
apologize to my wife.
Sometimes I have to ask my children
to forgive me.
Anyone who is used of God
is just living proof that God still speaks
through rocks and donkeys.
That's about all that you can say about it.
But He is faithful.
He's very, very faithful.
He's very kind.
You know, those of us who believe in sovereign grace,
we ought to have some
toward other people.
We really ought to.
Sometimes I get very afraid
when I think about what people think about me.
Some people who don't like me
are probably partially justified,
but I think they're maybe partially wrong.
A lot of people who really like me
are sometimes very oblivious
to what really goes on
as far as weaknesses
and not following Christ as I wish that I could.
We just all need prayer.
Let me say this.
In that statement about sovereign grace,
that's David Miller told me that,
so I want to give him credit.
You know what scares me the most?
Is if all of a sudden, the limelight dies down,
and no one cares to hear me preach anymore.
That's not what bothers me.
What scares me is this:
at that moment,
my true heart is going to be revealed.
What will it look like?
I hope that I will still
joyfully want to follow the Lord
and preach and whatever He gives me to do,
but I always think about that.
What happens when one day
you walk in the building,
and sometimes it's better that someone be mad at you
than no one feel anything at all.
What happens when no one's even concerned enough about you
to even be angry with you anymore?
And you just kind of disappear,
which will happen.
Will my heart show
that I'm full of pride?
That I desire this kind of stuff?
That's a good question.
Question: If you could,
in a real compact form,
what have you learned from Jay Adams
concerning depression?
Paul: The question is what have I learned
from Jay Adams concerning depression.
And that is, I guess the greatest thing
would be this,
that to be able to discern
when I am believing a lie -
believing something that is not true,
that does not conform to God's Word,
and then to preach -
instead of letting my heart preach to me,
that I ought to preach God's Word to my heart
and stand on the realities of God's Word
rather than on feelings.
Another thing that I think has been very helpful
is that so many things that would cause us
to pity and coddle a man,
instead, the man should be rebuked
because he's believing a lie.
Or so many things that seem to be
where we treat ourselves as pitiful victims
when in actuality, we're guilty criminals,
and just facing that.
Facing that with the Word of God
and repenting.
Another thing I think is very, very good
is that it is not enough to say no
to the flesh;
to say no to an evil practice,
but to substitute that evil practice
with the doing of good, with virtue.
It's not just putting off,
but it's putting on,
and much of that has been very, very helpful.
Very helpful.