John Piper's Book Excerpts

Here are some notes taken from the book men­tioned above. I hope you that you will take the time to read them in such a fash­ion so as to let the words sink down deep into your mind and spirit. Thank you and God bless you as always. John 

[From Pg. 33]
[Many peo­ple] …do not feel loved when they are told that God cre­ated them for his glory. They feel used. This is under­stand­able given the way love has been almost com­pletely dis­torted in our world. For most peo­ple, to be loved is to be made much of. Almost every­thing in our West­ern cul­tures serves this dis­tor­tion of love. We are taught in a thou­sand ways that love means increas­ing someone’s self esteem. Love is help­ing some­one feel good about them­selves. Love is giv­ing a mir­ror and help­ing him [or her] like what he sees. 

This is not what the Bible means by the love of God. Love is doing what is best for some­one. But mak­ing self the object of our affec­tions is not best for us. It is, in fact, a lethal dis­trac­tion. We were made to see and savor God– and savor­ing him, to be supremely sat­is­fied, and thus spread through­out al lthe world the worth of his pres­ence. Not to show peo­ple the all sat­is­fy­ing God is not to love them. To make them feel good about them­selves when they were made to feel good about God is like tak­ing some­one to the Alps and lock­ing them in a room full of mirrors.” 

“We are more than con­querors in our afflic­tion, not by avoid­ing them.”
[pg. 92]

“Oh how many lives are wasted by peo­ple who believe that the Chris­t­ian life means sim­ply avoid­ing bad­ness and pro­vid­ing for the fam­ily. So there is no adul­tery, no steal­ing, no killing, no embez­zle­ment, no fraud — just lots of hard work dur­ing the day, and lots of TV and PG-13 videos in the evening (dur­ing qual­ity fam­ily time), and lots of fun stuff on the week­end — woven around church (mostly). This is life for mil­lions of peo­ple. Wasted life. We were cre­ated for more, far more. … No one will ever want to say to the Lord of the uni­verse five min­utes after his death, I spent every night play­ing games and watch­ing clean TV with my fam­ily because I love them so much. I think the Lord will say. “That didn’t make me look like a trea­sure on your town. You should have done some­thing more that to pro­vide for your­self and your fam­ily. And TV, as you should have known, was not a good way to nur­ture your fam­ily or your soul.”

“God cre­ated me — and you — to live with a sin­gle, all embrac­ing, all trans­form­ing pas­sion — namely a pas­sion to glo­rify God by enjoy­ing and dis­play­ing his supreme excel­lence in all the spheres of life.