Dr Piper in light of your theology of suffering how do you how does that play out in your

churches in developing leaders and and also in how you think it should apply to developing youth ministry.

Let's take them in reverse order maybe.

I spoke over at Ridgecrest last week a bunch of times and they asked me to speak to the teenagers one night.

Now I haven't spoken to teenagers.

Well, I do. I speak to our teenagers at their graduation banquet once a year.

That's it, you know. I don't speak to youth and don't consider myself a

youth speaker so I went into that with some fear and trembling and as I prayed

and sought the Lord and talked to my wife about what I should say to 15 and 16 and 17 year olds,

I decided just to tell them what I always tell everybody and I gave basically the same message

and did it with as much energy as I could and I mentioned it because of the way they responded which was incredibly positively

that kids need to be challenged with theology. We really do. There's too much fun and games. We put the

cookie too low and we don't expect them to want to be made radical and so with regard to suffering

and I spoke to them on on objections I get to Christian hedonism, the pursuit of joy.

And I just took objection after objection

I've gotten over the 25 years or so I've

been at this and gave biblical answers to each one of them,

which are hard answers and tough answers, included the call to be radical

and lay down to your life and develop a theology of suffering.

And let's give you one fruit.

There was one fella, tall, blonde, gold chain, bleached earrings and t-shirt and way back on the back row,

slouching, folding arms, that sort of thing.

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