John Piper (theologian) - Desiring God (1986)

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The call of God does what the call of man cannot. It raises the dead.

John Piper
We have a name for those who try to praise when they have no pleasure in the object. We call them hypocrites.

John Piper
Love is the overflow of joy in God that meets the needs of others.

John Piper
All the different ways God has chosen to display his glory in creation and redemption seem to reach their culmination in the praises of his redeemed people. God governs the world with glory precisely that he might be admired, marvelled at, exalted and praised. The climax of his happiness is the delight he takes in the echoes of his excellence in the praises of the saints.

John Piper
I do not appeal to you to screw up your courage and sacrifice for Christ. I appeal to you to renounce all you have to obtain life that satisfies your deepest longings.

John Piper
We do not choose suffering simply because we are told to, but because the one who tells us to describes it as the path to everlasting joy.

John Piper
Marriage. The roots are deep. The covenant is solid. The love is sweet. Life is hard. And God is good.

John Piper
It is unbiblical and arrogant to try to worship God for any other reason than the pleasure to be had in Him.

John Piper
Why does God bless us with abundance? So we can have enough to live on and then use the rest for all manner of good works that alleviate spiritual and physical misery. Enough for us; abundance for others.

John Piper
Worship is a way of gladly reflecting back to God the radiance of his worth. This cannot be done by mere acts of duty. It can be done only when spontaneous affections arise in the heart.

John Piper
The more of God's Word you know and love, the more of God's Spirit you will experience.

John Piper
Faith is born and sustained by the Word of God, and out of faith grows the flower of joy.

John Piper
We can be content with simplicity because the deepest most satisfying delights God gives us through creation are free gifts from nature and from loving relationships with people. After your basic needs are met, accumulated money begins to diminish your capacity for these pleasures rather than increase them. Buying things contributes absolutely nothing to the heart's capacity for joy.

John Piper
If God should turn away from himself as the Source of infinite joy, he would cease to be God. He would deny the infinite worth of his own glory. He would imply that there is something more valuable outside himself. He would commit idolatry... Where will we find a Rock of integrity in the universe when the heart of God has ceased to value supremely the supremely valuable?

John Piper
The very longing for contentment that ought to drive us to simplicity of life and labors of love contents itself instead with the broken cisterns of prosperity and comfort.

John Piper
God has made us to be conduits of his grace. The danger is in thinking the conduit should be lined with gold. It shouldn't. Copper will do.

John Piper
God aims to exalt Himself by working for those who wait for Him.

John Piper
The engagement of the heart in worship is the coming alive of the feelings and emotions and affections of the heart. Where feelings for God are dead, worship is dead.

John Piper
Strong affections for God, rooted in and shaped by the truth of Scripture - this is the bone and marrow of Biblical worship.

John Piper
The deepest and most enduring happiness is found only in God. Not from God, but in God.

John Piper
Even on days when every cinder in our soul feels cold, if we crawl to the Word of God and cry out for ears to hear, the cold ashes will be lifted and the tiny spark of life will be fanned. For 'the law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul.'

John Piper
God's greatest interest is to glorify the wealth of His grace by making sinners happy in Him.

John Piper
God is love precisely because He relentlessly pursues the praises of His name in the hearts of His people.

John Piper
I know of no other way to triumph over sin long-term than to gain a distaste for it because of a superior satisfaction in God.

John Piper
There is a war going on. All talk of a Christian's right to live luxuriously "as a child of the King" in this atmosphere sounds hollow - especially since the King himself is stripped for battle.

John Piper
If you don't feel strong desires for the manifestation of the glory of God, it is not because you have drunk deeply and are satisfied. It is because you have nibbled so long at the table of the world. Your soul is stuffed with small things, and there is no room for the great.9 God did not create you for this. There is an appetite for God. And it can be awakened. I invite you to turn from the dulling effects of food and the dangers of idolatry, and to say with some simple fast: This much, O God, I want you.

John Piper