Are you free for the next 8 months?

I'm trying to make sure I don't come across as dissing one of my heroes. After meditating on this a couple of days, I've hopefully come to a place where I can write what I'm feeling honestly and upliftingly.

Last week John Piper announced an 8-month sabbatical. I love John Piper. He preached in my church last year during Advent, and I wasn't about to miss it. I read "Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist" years ago, and was thoroughly changed by it. I don't always agree with him, I'm not necessarily too reformed in my theology, but John Piper is a godly man and as I said, one of my heroes.

This blog really isn't about him though, and that's what I hope comes across. It's more about the reaction I've seen from others about his announced sabbatical. He's leaving because in his soul he feels there are some perhaps hidden, underlying issues in him personally and in his family relationships that God wants him to deal with. There's no obvious sin, no big confessions or anything, just that he senses he's not where he needs to be.

I think I know that feeling. I've been dealing with it lately too.

The response, at least in the circles I read in, have been awesome in support of his choice. And in my heart, I'm with them. I'm glad he has the chance to do this.

In some ways I wish I did.

Which leads me to why I really wanted to write this blog. I wanted to make a pitch for the "every-day" man or woman who cannot take an 8-month sabbatical. I wanted to say that you -- those of you who live lives and work jobs and love your spouses, and those of you who have hurting lives and jobs you don't enjoy and fight with your spouses, and everybody who lives with a grand milieu of both good and bad, love and apathy, success and struggle -- to you I say that God CAN and WILL speak to you even if you can't take 8 months off, even if you feel like you can't take 8 hours off. For those who work for hourly wages, who work two jobs, who live below the line of poverty, who are single parents, or whatever circumstance of life you're in, God CAN and WILL give you great relationships with your spouse and kids, he CAN and WILL give you wisdom and direction in life.

He will reveal himself to you, in spite of your busyness. Ask, seek, knock; he is available to you.

I'm glad for John Piper, and pray that God speaks deeply into his life during this time. If you can take a sabbatical, I would recommend you do it for sure! But if you're like me and can't take that kind of time off right now for whatever reason, don't be discouraged that you might somehow be missing something from God. God still very much wants to reveal himself to you. He doesn't love John Piper any more than he loves you.

And while I wouldn't dream of speaking for John, I have a feeling he would agree.