Though I have much to write to you, I would rather not use paper and ink. Instead, I hope to come to you and talk face to face so that our joy may be complete.
– 2 John 12
Is this not a great verse? I love how John says, oh, there’s so many things I want to say to you, but it’s just not the same when I use paper and ink when I just write it out. I want to come and be face-to-face with you.
2 John 12 teaches us about the joy found in direct interaction.
Listen to the purpose clause in this verse, so that our joy may be complete. There is more joy that is found in face-to-face conversation than there is in paper and ink. While I realize we don’t use paper and ink nearly as much today, but we do bury our faces in screens and we use a lot of keyboards, whether on our phone or our computer to send a text or a message or an email or whatever it might be, which is not bad.
I mean, in moderation and in ways that bring glory to God with our use of time. That’s a whole other conversation. But let’s not forget that face-to-face fellowship with and communication with other people increases joy. That’s what John’s saying here in this verse, and so I just want to encourage you today, yes, by all means, maximize text to build up others in Christ, and maximize social media. Encourage and build up others in Christ. Share the gospel.
2 John 12 reminds us to maximize face-to-face encounters.
Absolutely maximize technology to build others up in Christ and share and spread the gospel. But don’t forget the value of face-to-face like today. Look for opportunities to lift your eyes from your screen, like be all the more intentional today to take your eyes off the screen, to look in the eyes of other people and build them up in Christ and share the gospel of Christ in ways that increase your joy.
Oh God, we pray that you would help us and the constant temptation we face in our culture today to bury our face in screens and to send messages or read this or that on those screens. God help us to take intentional time to look at others face-to-face, and to encourage them, God, to build them up in you, to share the gospel with people around us today.
Prayer for the Bukharan Jewish People
And God, we pray that in all of this, our joy would increase God even as we pray for unreached people, and over the next few days, praying specifically for Jewish people spread in different places that diaspora among Jewish people.
God, we pray specifically for Bukharan Jewish men and women from the former Soviet Union who are in the United States now 140,000 of them, no known followers of Jesus among them. God, we pray that someone in the United States, in Russia would share the gospel today with Bukharan Jewish men, women, and children, and lead them to see the joy of the Messiah Jesus, who loves them and has died on the cross for their sins.
Lord, we pray that you would help us all to maximize the joy of sharing the gospel face-to-face with others in our lives and building up others in Christ. God, help us to look face-to-face to others and make our joy complete in the way that John talks about here in 2 John 12. In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
