Welcome back to Aspastor John. This summer Pastor John is out of the studio preaching in Belfast in Scotland before returning to the States for a 40-day writing leave to finish up a book on Providence on the sovereignty of God.

A book he started last summer and hopes to finish this summer.

I cannot wait to see it and all of it the travel the book writing in this very podcast is all made possible by you.

We are supported by the prayers and the funding of God's people so thank you for generously investing in this important and eternal work.

So with Pastor John Busy we're diving into our archive of 1500 episodes and this summer we're pulling out some of your favorites.

About once every 50 episodes we release one that touches a nerve and touches the 300,000 play mark.

These are the elite episodes in our six and a half year history. We only have about 30 of them and here's one of them.

We recently talked about the book. You just wrote Pastor John back on Thursday of last week. You give us a personal update.

In light of that Brandon in Charlotte North Carolina writes and asks this Pastor John thank you for your Christ centered precision and for the tremendous volume of your ministry output.

I'm curious how you produce so much content. What time do you wake up? How do you find time to read and write? When do you eat your cereal?

You mentioned your aversion to TV and don't waste your life. But what advice do you have for the daily schedule making to make the most of your life for Christ?

I think the first thing I should say is beware of wanting to be like me. You don't know the sins of my life. You don't know how much I have neglected.

You don't know what the costs have been. The real question is how to be the fullest, most God centered, Christ exalting, Bible saturated, loving, humble, mission advancing, just to seeking others serving person.

You can be. Don't measure yourself by others. Measure yourself by your potential in Christ. That's the first thing that I felt I had to say because of the way the question seemed to be posed.

Now there are a lot of other things to say. Let me tick them off. The second thing I would say is give 10% of your focus in life to avoiding obstacles to productivity and 90% of your focus to fastening on to great goals and pursuing them with all your might.

Very few people become productive by avoiding obstacles to productivity. It's not a good focus. That's not where energy comes from. It's not where vision comes from. People write books about that and make a lot of money, but that's not where anybody gets anything worthwhile done.

Getting things done that count come from great, glorious, wonderful future possibilities that take you captive and draw your pursuit with all your might and then all that other stuff about getting obstacles out of your way. That's the 10% of broom work that you have to do.

The third thing I want to say. Life comes to us in chapters that are very different from each other. If you are married and have little children, that's a chapter that needs a great deal of focus on the children.

If God wills, there may be another chapter for you with different possibilities, different potentials and different priorities. The Lord will be pleased if you focus on the chapter you're in and live according to the demands of that chapter with all your might.

The fourth thing to say. Give serious thought and prayer to what your big, all-consuming life goal is. The biblical expression of mine is found in Philippians 1-20. It is my eager expectations, John Piper, not just Paul talking.

It is my eager expectation and hope that I will not at all be ashamed but with full courage. Now as always, Christ will be magnified in my body whether by life or by death for to me to live as Christ and die as gain.

So Christ magnified in living and dying, spreading a passion for that Christ into the lives of others. That's the goal. That's the big overarching goal. So find yours and make it work in everything you do.

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