John Piper is founder and teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary. For 33 years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is author of more than 50 books , including Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist and most recently Coronavirus and Christ

John Piper is founder and teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary. For 33 years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is author of more than 50 books , including Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist and most recently Coronavirus and Christ

Audio Transcript

“I love Jesus, but my heart is drawn to spend too much time with entertainment. How do I break the hold entertainment has on my heart?” That was a question sent in to Desiring God a few years back, and it was a question Pastor John addressed. Here’s what he said.

That is a very good question, and I think it is especially relevant because we live more than ever in a day when entertainment is immediately accessible. I was thinking the other day of the difference between our temptations and, say, three hundred years ago — the day of Jonathan Edwards. Edwards would write about the folly of young people getting together to make frivolous conversation, or other worse things — “bundling” it was called, where you get into bed with each other and keep your clothes on, that sort of thing — just to spice up life a little bit. Life got boring in New England three hundred years ago.

Entertainment in Our Pockets

Today we carry radio, television, Internet, games, and anything that will be titillating — fun — in our pockets.

And fun is a word in the church today that is just rampant. It’s an adjective; it’s a noun; it’s a verb. We do ministry in order to fit this mentality. I am deeply concerned about that. I want to stand for seriousness about God instead of making him palatable by making him fun — turning him into another piece of entertainment.

Ways to Break Free from Entertainment

So this question is, How do you break free from that kind of addiction?

1. Recognizing the addiction is a huge step in the right direction.

2. Seek the Lord earnestly about it. Pray like crazy that God would open your eyes to see wondrous things out of his law.

3. Immerse yourself in the Bible even when you don’t feel like it, pleading with God to open your eyes to see what is really there.

4. Get in a group where you talk about serious things.

5. Begin to share your faith.

One of the reasons we are not as moved by our own faith as we should be is because we almost never talk about it to any unbeliever. It starts to feel like a kind of hothouse thing, and then starts to have a feeling of unreality about it, and then the powers of entertainment have more sway in our life. So those would be some of the things. But ultimately it is a gift of grace to feel the glory of God.

How Will You Meet Christ?

Here’s one last suggestion: Think about your death. Think about your death a lot. Ask what you would like to be doing in the season of life or hours or days leading up to meeting Christ. I do that a lot these days. I think about the impact of death and what I would like to be found doing and how I would prepare to meet him and give an account to him.