John Piper Quotes:

But whatever you do, find the God-centered, Christ-exalting, Bible-saturated passion of your life, and find your way to say it and live for it and die for it. And you will make a difference that lasts. You will not waste your life.

Topics: Inspiration, Passion, Differences, Waste Of Life, Saturated

Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn't.

Topics: Goal, Christian Inspirational, Church, Inspirational Missionary, Missionary Life

God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.

Topics: Christian, Powerful, Inspiration, Following God, Christian Living

Grace is the pleasure of God to magnify the worth of God by giving sinners the right and power to delight in God without obscuring the glory of God.

Topics: Giving, Grace, Delight, Glory Of God

Christ did not die to forgive sinners who go on treasuring anything above seeing and savoring God. And people who would be happy in heaven if Christ were not there, will not be there. The gospel is not a way to get people to heaven; it is a way to get people to God. It's a way of overcoming every obstacle to everlasting joy in God. If we don't want God above all things, we have not been converted by the gospel.

Topics: People, Joy, Heaven, Savoring

Don't follow a defeated foe. Follow Christ. It is costly. You will be an exile in this age. But you will be free.

Topics: Age, Christ, Defeated

There is hope in forgiveness

Topics: There Is Hope, Lord Forgive Me

We weren't meant to be somebody--we were meant to know Somebody

Topics: Love, Meant To Be

Life is wasted if we do not grasp the glory of the cross, cherish it for the treasure that it is, and cleave to it as the highest price of every pleasure and the deepest comfort in every pain. What was once foolishness to us—a crucified God—must become our wisdom and our power and our only boast in this world.

Topics: Christian, Easter, Pain, Christ On The Cross

The wisdom of God devised a way for the love of God to deliver sinners from the wrath of God while not compromising the righteousness of God.

Topics: Wrath, Way, Compromise, Wrath Of God

The evil and suffering in this world are greater than any of us can comprehend. But evil and suffering are not ultimate. God is. Satan, the great lover of evil and suffering, is not sovereign. God is.

Topics: Evil, Suffering, Sovereign, Evil And Suffering, Great Lovers

Reading is more important to me than eating.

Topics: Reading, Important, Eating

It is better to lose your life than to waste it.

Topics: Waste, Theology

All heroes are shadows of Christ

Topics: Hero, Shadow, Christ

God is not an employer looking for employees. He is an Eagle looking for people who will take refuge under his wings. He is looking for people who will leave father and mother and homeland or anything else that may hold them back from a life of love under the wings of Jesus.

Topics: Mother, Jesus, Father

Life is not a straight line leading from one blessing to the next and then finally to heaven. Life is a winding and troubled road. Switchback after switchback. And the point of biblical stories like Joseph and Job and Esther and Ruth is to help us feel in our bones (not just know in our heads) that God is for us in all these strange turns. God is not just showing up after the trouble and cleaning it up. He is plotting the course and managing the troubles with far-reaching purposes for our good and for the glory of Jesus Christ.

Topics: Jesus, Jobs, Biblical, Straight Lines, Esther

The critical question for our generation—and for every generation— is this: If you could have heaven, with no sickness, and with all the friends you ever had on earth, and all the food you ever liked, and all the leisure activities you ever enjoyed, and all the natural beauties you ever saw, all the physical pleasures you ever tasted, and no human conflict or any natural disasters, could you be satisfied with heaven, if Christ were not there?

Topics: Our Generation, Heaven, Earth, Leisure Activities

God tests His people through hardship.

Topics: People, Hardship, Tests

Prayer is the open admission that without Christ we can do nothing. And prayer is the turning away from ourselves to God in the confidence that He will provide the help we need. Prayer humbles us as needy and exalts God as wealthy

Topics: Prayer, Needs, Helping, Need Prayer

Grace is not simply leniency when we have sinned. Grace is the enabling gift of God not to sin. Grace is power, not just pardon.

Topics: Grace, Enabling, Sin, Leniency, God's Grace

God seldom calls us for an easier life, but always calls us to know more of him and drink more deeply of His sustaining grace.

Topics: Grace, Drink, Easier, Sustaining, Easier Life

We can say that true gratitude does not give rise to the debtor's ethic because it gives rise to faith in future grace. With true gratitude there is such a delight in the worth of God's past grace, that we are driven on to experience more and more of it in the future...it is done by transforming gratitude into faith as it turns from contemplating the pleasures of past grace and starts contemplating the promises of the future.

Topics: Gratitude, Past, Giving, Promise Of The Future

What is the essence of evil? It is forsaking a living fountain for broken cisterns. God gets derision and we get death. They are one: choosing sugarcoated misery we mock the lifegiving God. It was meant to be another way: God's glory exalted in our everlasting joy.

Topics: Essence, Evil, Broken, Mock, Derision

I will not waste my life! I will finish my course and finish it well. I will display the Gospel of the grace of God in all I do. I will run my race to the end.” - Paul

Topics: Running, Race, Waste

We have brought nothing into the world, so we cannot take anything out of it either.' There are no U-Hauls behind hearses.

Topics: World, Behinds

What defines us as Christians is not most profoundly that we have come to know him but that he took note of us and made us his own.

Topics: Christian, Notes, Made

The key to Christian living is a thirst and hunger for God. And one of the main reasons people do not understand or experience the sovereignty of grace and the way it works through the awakening of sovereign joy is that their hunger and thirst for God is so small.

Topics: Christian, Keys, People, Hunger And Thirst, Christian Living

humility is beyond our reach. if it were a product of reaching, we would instinctively be proud of reaching it. it is a gift.

Topics: Humility, Proud, Reaching

America is the first culture in jeopardy of amusing itself to death.

Topics: America, Culture, Firsts, Jeopardy, Waste Of Life

Ignatius, when he heard the clock strike, would say, "Now I have another hour to answer for." (Eph. 5:16)

Topics: Answers, Hours, Clock

The greatest enemy of hunger for God is not poison but apple pie. It is not the banquet of the wicked that dulls our appetite for heaven, but endless nibbling at the table of the world. It is not the X-rated video, but the prime-time dribble of triviality we drink in every night.

Topics: Night, Apples, Pie, Nibbling, Dribble

All of history is moving toward one great goal, the white-hot worship of God and His Son among all the peoples of the earth. Missions is not that goal. It is the means. And for that reason it is the second greatest human activity in the world.

Topics: Moving, Mean, Son

God will not turn away from doing you good. He will keep on doing good. He doesn't do good to His children sometimes and bad to them other times. He keeps on doing good and He never will stop doing good for ten thousand ages of ages. When things are going bad that does not mean God has stopped doing good. It means He is shifting things around to get them in place for more good, if you will go on loving Him.

Topics: Children, Mean, Age

Death is like my car. It takes me where I want to go.

Topics: Christian Inspirational, Car, Want

If truth does not lead to falling in love, it fails.

Topics: Falling In Love, Fall, Doe

Life is too short, too precious, too painful to waste on worldly bubbles that burst

Topics: Life Is Too Short, Waste, Painful

The Bible is the ultimate authority and infallible, not the pastor and not the elders. And it doesn't mean that you believe everything he says without examining it.

Topics: Believe, Mean, Authority, Examining

God is pursuing with omnipotent passion a worldwide purpose of gathering joyful worshipers for Himself from every tribe and tongue and people and nation. He has an inexhaustible enthusiasm for the supremacy of His name among the nations. Therefore, let us bring our affections into line with His, and, for the sake of His name, let us renounce the quest for worldly comforts and join His global purpose.

Topics: Passion, Names, Christian Inspirational, Inspirational Missionary, Great Missionary

Do you feel loved by God because you believe he makes much of you, or because you believe he frees you and empowers you to enjoy making much of him?

Topics: Believe, Empowering, Enjoy

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.

Topics: Powerful, Inspiration, Passion

Your mind was made to know and love God.

Topics: Mind, And Love, God Love

At one level, the message of the book of Ruth is that the life of the godly is not a straight line to glory, but they do get there.

Topics: Book, Godly, Messages

Books don't change people; paragraphs do, Sometimes even sentences.

Topics: Book, People, Sometimes

What is sin? It is the glory of God not honored. The holiness of God not reverenced. The greatness of God not admired. The power of God not praised. The truth of God not sought. The wisdom of God not esteemed. The beauty of God not treasured. The goodness of God not savored. The faithfulness of God not trusted. The commandments of God not obeyed. The justice of God not respected. The wrath of God not feared. The grace of God not cherished. The presence of God not prized. The person of God not loved. That is sin.

Topics: Greatness, Wrath, Justice, Wrath Of God, Holiness Of God

Why don't people ask us about our hope? The answer is probably that we look as if we hope in the same things they do. Our lives don't look like they are on the Calvary road, stripped down for sacrificial love, serving others with the sweet assurance that we don't need to be rewarded in this life.

Topics: Sweet, People, Needs, Calvary, Serving

Go, send, or disobey.

Topics: Christian Inspirational, Missionary, Missions

Suffering in the path of Christian obedience, with joy - because the steadfast love of the Lord is better than life (Psalm 63:3) - is the clearest display of the worth of God in our lives. Therefore, faith-filled suffering is essential in this world for the most intense, authentic worship. When we are most satisfied with God in suffering, he will be most glorified in us in worship. Our problem is not styles of music. Our problem is styles of life. When we embrace more affliction for the worth of Christ, there will be more fruit in the worship of Christ.

Topics: Christian, Joy, Style, Steadfast Love, Psalms

The really wonderful moments of joy in this world are not the moments of self-satisfaction, but self-forgetfulness. Standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon and contemplating your own greatness is pathological. At such moments we are made for a magnificent joy that comes from outside ourselves.

Topics: Greatness, Self, Joy, Standing On The Edge, Waste Of Life

God without Christ is no God.

Topics: Christ

Taken as a whole, the story of Ruth is one of those signs. It was written to give us encouragement and hope that all the perplexing turns in our lives are going somewhere good. They do not lead off a cliff. In all the setbacks of our lives as believers, God is plotting for our joy.

Topics: Encouragement, Taken, Giving

One of the great uses of Twitter and Facebook will be to prove at the Last Day that prayerlessness was not from lack of time.

Topics: Christian Inspirational, Use, Lasts, Last Day, Jesus Inspirational

The strength of patience hangs on our capacity to believe that God is up to something good for us in all our delays and detours.

source: - John Piper (2012). “Future Grace, Revised Edition: The Purifying Power of the Promises of God”, p.170, Multnomah

Topics: Believe, Delay, Detours

If you live gladly to make others glad in God, your life will be hard, your risks will be high, and your joy will be full.

Topics: Joy, Risk, Glad

If you alter or obscure the Biblical portrait of God in order to attract converts, you don't get converts to God, you get converts to an illusion. This is not evangelism, but deception.

Topics: Biblical, Order, Religion

God created us for this: to live our lives in a way that makes him look more like the greatness and the beauty and the infinite worth that he really is. This is what it means to be created in the image of God.

Topics: Mean, Greatness, Looks

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.

Topics: Strong, Long, Drunk, Strong Desire, Glory Of God

Redemption is not perfection. The redeemed must realize their imperfections.

Topics: Perfection, Imperfection, Redemption, Redeemed

Christ did not die to make good works merely possible or to produce a half-hearted pursuit. He died to produce in us a passion for good deeds. Christian purity is not the mere avoidance of evil, but the pursuit of good.

Topics: Christian, Passion, Evil, Avoidance, Half Hearted

The Lord is kind. He is good to all who take refuge under his wings.

Topics: Wings, Kind, Lord

...we should all fortify ourselves against the dark hours of depression by cultivating a deep distrust of the certainties of despair. Despair is relentless in the certainties of its pessimism. But we have seen again and again, from our own experience and others', that absolute statements of hopelessness that we make in the dark are notoriously unreliable. Our dark certainties are not sureties.

Topics: Dark, Despair, Pessimism, Dark Hours

When you are deeply peaceful and confident that, because of Christ, God will bring you safely to his eternal kingdom and be the all-satisfying Treasure of your life forever, then you are free to see the truth, and love the truth, and speak the truth no matter what, and joyfully spread a passion for the truth whose name is Jesus.

Topics: Jesus, Passion, Names

heaven is a place of unparalleled and indescribable joy

Topics: Joy, Heaven, Indescribable

Whether sexual orientation can change or not, hearts can change and turn any sexual orientation into an occasion for the glory of Christ. Those with same-sex attraction glorify Christ through sexual abstinence and through the enrichment of significant Christ-exalting relationships in other ways.

Topics: Sex, Heart, Way, Enrichment

In EVERY situation and EVERY circumstance of your life, God is always doing a thousand different things that you cannot see and you do not know.

Topics: Different, Circumstances, Situation

If you can't see the sun you will be impressed with a street light. If you've never felt thunder and lightning you'll be impressed with fireworks. And if you turn your back on the greatness and majesty of God you'll fall in love with a world of shadows and short-lived pleasures.

Topics: Falling In Love, Greatness, Light, Street Lights, Thunder And Lightning

My feelings are not God. God is God. My feelings do not define truth. God’s word defines truth. My feelings are echoes and responses to what my mind perceives. And sometimes - many times - my feelings are out of sync with the truth. When that happens - and it happens every day in some measure - I try not to bend the truth to justify my imperfect feelings, but rather, I plead with God: Purify my perceptions of your truth and transform my feelings so that they are in sync with the truth.

Topics: Echoes, Feelings, Perception, Sync

Sin is what you do when your heart is not satisfied with God.

source: - John Piper (2012). “Future Grace, Revised Edition: The Purifying Power of the Promises of God”, p.1, Multnomah

Topics: Christian, Heart, Sin, Psalms

People don't enjoy salt. They enjoy what is salted. We are the salt of the earth. We do not exist for ourselves.

Topics: People, Earth, Salt, Salt Of The Earth

When the heart no longer feels the truth of hell, the gospel passes from good news to simply news

source: - John Piper (2013). “Brothers, We Are Not Professionals: A Plea to Pastors for Radical Ministry”, p.134, B&H Publishing Group

Topics: Heart, News, Hell

A Christian is not a person who believes in his head the teachings of the Bible. Satan believes in his head the teachings of the Bible! A Christian is a person who has died with Christ, whose stiff neck has been broken, whose brazen forehead has been shattered, whose stony heart has been crushed, whose pride has been slain, and whose life is now mastered by Jesus Christ.

Topics: Christian, Jesus, Believe, Brazen, Stiff Neck

When GOD is our deepest pleasure we display Him as our highest treasure.

Topics: Treasure, Pleasure, Highest

One of the great enemies of hope is forgetting God's promises.

Topics: Promise, Enemy, Forget

Whenever your heart starts to be anxious about the future, preach to your heart and say, 'Heart, who do you think you are to be afraid of the future and nullify the promise of God? No, heart, I will not exalt myself with anxiety. I will humble myself in peace and joy as I trust this precious and great promise of God - He cares for me.'

Topics: Heart, Humble, Thinking

Life is precarious, and life is precious. Don't presume you will have it tomorrow, and don't waste it today.

source: - John Piper (2009). “Taste and See: Savoring the Supremacy of God in All of Life”, p.34, Multnomah

Topics: Life Is Precious, Today, Waste, Precarious

Our deeds are not the basis of our salvation, they are the evidence of our salvation. They are not foundation, they are demonstration.

source: - John Piper (2012). “Future Grace, Revised Edition: The Purifying Power of the Promises of God”, p.364, Multnomah

Topics: Foundation, Deeds, Salvation

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

source: - John Piper (2011). “Desiring God, Revised Edition: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist”, p.28, Multnomah

Topics: Found, Endure

You can't praise what you don't prize.

source: - John Piper (2012). “Future Grace, Revised Edition: The Purifying Power of the Promises of God”, p.1, Multnomah

Topics: Praise, Prize

If God's love for his children is to be measured by our health, wealth, and comfort in this life, God hated the apostle Paul.

Topics: Children, Comfort, Wealth, Health Wealth, Apostle Paul

The Gospel is not how people get to heaven. The Gospel is how people get to God.

Topics: People, Heaven

A woman who fears the Lord will not run away from God to satisfy her longings and relieve her anxieties. She will wait for the Lord. She will hope in God. She will stay close to the heart of God and trust in his promises. The prospect of departing into the way of sin will be too fearful to pursue; and the benefits of abiding in the shadow of the Almighty too glorious to forsake.

Topics: Running, Heart, Waiting, Hope In God

God is at work in the worst of times. He is at work doing a thousand things no one can see but him.

Topics: Worst, Thousand

Do all things without grumbling. Why? You have a sovereign God who is on your side, who works everything together for your good.

Topics: Your Side, Christian Inspirational, Together, Grumbling

Darkness comes. In the middle of it, the future looks blank. The temptation to quit is huge. Don't. You are in good company... You will argue with yourself that there is no way forward. But with God, nothing is impossible. He has more ropes and ladders and tunnels out of pits than you can conceive. Wait. Pray without ceasing. Hope.

Topics: Tunnels, Way Forward, Waiting

We cannot know what prayer is for until we know that life is war.

source: - John Piper (2010). “Let the Nations Be Glad!: The Supremacy of God in Missions”, p.65, Baker Academic

Topics: Prayer, War, Life Is

I've never heard anyone say the really deep lessons of life have come in times of ease and comfort. But, I have heard many saints say every significant advance I've ever made in grasping in the depth of God's love and growing deep with Him, have come through suffering.

Topics: Life Lesson, Suffering, Depth, Really Deep

The whole world lives for pleasure. The only difference is theirs is fleeting, while ours is forever in Jesus.

Topics: Jesus, Differences, Forever, World Life

The key that unlocks the treasure chest of God's peace is faith in the promises of God.

Topics: Christian, Keys, Promise, Treasure Chests

Many people are willing to be God-centered as long as they feel that God is man-centered

source: - John Piper (2013). “Brothers, We Are Not Professionals: A Plea to Pastors for Radical Ministry”, p.6, B&H Publishing Group

Topics: Men, Long, People

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

source: - John Piper (2011). “Desiring God, Revised Edition: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist”, p.123, Multnomah

Topics: Love Is, Joy, Needs, Overflow, Needs Of Others

Prayer as a relationship is probably your best indicator about the health of your love relationship with God. If your prayer life has been slack, your love relationship has grown cold.

Topics: Christian, Prayer, Love Relationship, Our Prayers, Prayer Life

We need God in ways we do not know. Don't limit your experience of God to what you can think to ask. Ask for the unknown joy.

source: - John Piper @JohnPiper, twitter.com. November 9, 2009.

Topics: Thinking, Joy, Needs

God is always doing 10,000 things in your life, and you may be aware of three of them.

Topics: Three, May

Faith begins with a backward look at the cross, but it lives with a forward look at the promises

Topics: Promise, Looks, Crosses

The cross is not a mere event in history; it's a way of life! Take up your cross DAILY, Jesus said!

Topics: Jesus, Events, Way, Events In History

Prayer causes things to happen that wouldn't happen if you didn't pray.

Topics: Prayer, Causes, Praying

Sleep is a daily reminder from God that we are not God. Once a day God sends us to bed like patients with a sickness. The sickness is a chronic tendency to think we are in control and that our work is indispensable. To cure us of this disease God turns us into helpless sacks of sand once a day.

Topics: Sleep, Thinking, Bed

The deepest longing of the human heart is to know and enjoy the glory of God. We were made for this.

source: - John Piper (2016). “A Peculiar Glory: How the Christian Scriptures Reveal Their Complete Truthfulness”, p.150, SPCK

Topics: Heart, Longing, Glory, Glory Of God

O, God of wonder, enlarge my capacity to be amazed at what is amazing, and end my attraction to the insignificant.

Topics: Wonder, Ends, Capacity

Don't ever think that the sin of your past means there is no hope for your future.

Topics: Mean, Past, Thinking

Do we eagerly long for the coming of Christ? Or do we want him to wait while our love affair with the world runs its course? That is the question that tests the authenticity of faith.

Topics: Running, Long, Waiting

Prosperity cannot be a proof of God's favor, since it is what the devil promises to those who worship him. (Matt. 4:9)

Topics: Promise, Devil, Favors, Proof Of God

Put your ear to the ground of God's word and listen to the rumble of His faithfulness coming.

Topics: Ears, Faithfulness, Rumble

The ultimate purpose of life is to show that Jesus is more precious than life.

Topics: Jesus, Purpose, Life Is

Boasting is the outward form of the inner condition of pride.

Topics: Pride, Form, Boast

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

source: - John Piper (2011). “Desiring God, Revised Edition: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist”, p.148, Multnomah

Topics: And Love, Spirit, Knows

You may be going through things right now that are painfully preparing you for some precious service to Jesus and to his people. When a person strikes rock bottom with a sense of nothingness or helplessness, he may find that he has struck the Rock of Ages

Topics: Jesus, Rocks, People, Helplessness

God's global aim in creation and redemption is not only the glory of his name, but also the gladness of the peoples.

Topics: Names, Redemption, Glory, Gladness

Do not be more devoted to your own brain than you are to the Bible.

Topics: Brain, Devoted

May we catch enough of a vision of Christ that we will not be satisfied unless we know him more fully.

Topics: Vision, May, Christ

If you are sufficient for your task, it's too small.

Topics: Tasks, Ifs, Sufficient

Satan's aim is to destroy our joy and trust and delight in God, and to make God look worthless in the world's eyes. Everytime someone forsakes God for the world, gets angry at God when part of the world is taken away from them, they highlight the world as valuable... and everytime someone stays with God, when the world is taken away, and praises God, they highlight the value and glory of God.

Topics: Faith, Religious, Taken, Forsake, Praise God

We embrace the hand we've been dealt, because we know the Dealer, and he never deals badly.

Topics: Hands, Embrace, Deals

The suffering of sickness and the suffering of persecution have this in common: they are both intended by Satan for the destruction of our faith, and governed by God for the purifying of our faith... Christ sovereignly accomplishes His loving, purifying purpose, by overruling Satan's destructive attempts. Satan is always aiming to destroy our faith; but Christ magnifies His power in weakness.

Topics: Suffering, Weakness, Purpose, Purifying

Not going to God because your faith is weak is like not going to the doctor because you feel sick.

Topics: Doctors, Sick, Weak

Every good thing in the Christian life grows in the soil of humility. Without humility, every virtue and every grace withers. That’s why Calvin said humility is first, second, and third in the Christian faith.

Topics: Christian, Humility, Grace, Christian Faith

Anger devours almost all other good emotions. It deadens the soul. It numbs the heart to joy and gratitude and hope and tenderness and compassion and kindness.

Topics: Gratitude, Kindness, Heart, Joy And Gratitude

There are only three kinds of Christians when it comes to world missions: zealous goers, zealous senders, and disobedient.

source: - John Piper (2010). “Let the Nations Be Glad! DVD Study Guide”, p.8, Baker Academic

Topics: Christian, Missionary, Three

Why Christians do what they do is just as important as what they do. Bad motives ruin good acts.

source: - John Piper (2013). “Brothers, We Are Not Professionals: A Plea to Pastors for Radical Ministry, Updated and Expanded Edition”, p.50, B&H Publishing Group

Topics: Christian, Important, Ruins

"How are you doing?" - - - better than I deserve.

Topics: Suffering, Inevitable, Deserve

Doing things in secret that you are ashamed for others to know is practical atheism. God's knowing doesn't count?

Topics: Knowing, Secret, Atheism

Worship is what we were created for. This is the final end of all existence-the worship of God. God created the universe so that it would display the worth of His glory. And He created us so that we would see this glory and reflect it by knowing and loving it-with all our heart and soul and mind and strength. The church needs to build a common vision of what worship is and what she is gathering to do on Sunday morning and scattering to do on Monday morning.

Topics: Monday, Morning, Heart, Sunday Morning, Display

You get one pass at life. That’s all. Only one. And the lasting measure of that life is Jesus Christ.

Topics: Jesus, Life Is, Christ

Without the renewed mind, we will distort the Scriptures to avoid their radical commands for self-denial, and love, and purity, and supreme satisfaction in Christ alone.

Topics: Self, Mind, Satisfaction, Christ Alone

Our obedience is God's pleasure when it proves that God is our treasure.

source: - John Piper (2012). “The Pleasures of God: Meditations on God's Delight in Being God”, p.250, Multnomah

Topics: Treasure, Pleasure, Obedience, Commandments Of God, Commandments

Gratitude is the joy that arises in response to God’s good will toward us in all his gifts.

Topics: Gratitude, Joy, Arise

It is about the greatness of God, not the significance of man. God made man small and the universe big to say something about himself.

Topics: Greatness, Men, Made, Greatness Of God

Loving God with all our mind means that our thinking is wholly engaged to do all it can to awaken and express the heartfelt fullness of treasuring God above all things.

source: - John Piper (2013). “Think”, p.86, SPCK

Topics: Heart, Mean, Thinking

The Gospel is the news that Jesus Christ, the Righteous One, died for our sins and rose again, eternally triumphant over all his enemies, so that there is now no condemnation for those who believe, but only everlasting joy.

Topics: Jesus, Believe, Rose

You never outgrow your need to preach to yourself the gospel.

Topics: Needs

Headship is the divine calling of a husband to take primary responsibility for Christlike, servant leadership, protection, and provision in the home.

source: - John Piper (2013). “This Momentary Marriage”, p.56, SPCK

Topics: Husband, Responsibility, Home, Headship

Christmas: the Son of God expressing the love of God to save us from the wrath of God so we could enjoy the presence of God.

Topics: Son, Wrath, God Love, Wrath Of God

God is on the move to rescue people from misery to everlasting happiness, which can only be found in him.

Topics: Moving, People, Misery

Don't marry so you can stop pursuing women. Marry so you can perfect the pursuit of ONE woman for a lifetime.

Topics: Perfect, Lifetime, Pursuit, One Woman

God created us to live with a single passion: to joyfully display his supreme excellence in all spheres of life. The wasted life is the life without this passion. God calls us to pray and think and dream and plan and work, not to be made much of, but to make much of him in every part of our lives.

source: - John Piper (2003). “Don't Waste Your Life”, Crossway

Topics: Dream, Passion, Thinking, Wasted Life

Life is war. That's not all it is. But it is always that. Our weakness in prayer is owing largely to our neglect of this truth. Prayer is primarily a wartime walkie-talkie for the mission of the church as it advances against the powers of darkness and unbelief.

source: - John Piper (2010). “Let the Nations Be Glad!: The Supremacy of God in Missions”, p.65, Baker Academic

Topics: Prayer, War, Darkness, Walkie Talkies, Talkies

Christ is glorified in you when he is more precious to you than all that life can give or death can take.

Topics: Giving, Christ

And in these last hours, the lifetime of this year passes before my eyes, and I face the inevitable question: Did I live it well? Will Jesus Christ, the righteous judge, say “Well done, good and faithful servant”?

Topics: Jesus, Eye, Years, Faithful Servants

Treasuring life above Christ is a tragedy.

Topics: Tragedy, Christ, Wasted Life

The immensity of His worth is reflected in the intensity of your worship.

Topics: Worship, Intensity, Immensity

The most dangerous thing in the world is the sin of self-reliance and the stupor of worldliness.

Topics: Self, World, Sin, Worldliness

Worship is a way of gladly reflecting back to God the radiance of His worth.

source: - John Piper (2011). “Desiring God, Revised Edition: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist”, p.84, Multnomah

Topics: Prayer, Reflecting Back, Radiance

If you don’t know God as beautiful and satisfying, you don’t know him.

Topics: Beautiful, Knowing God, Knows

To love God does not mean to meet His needs, but rather to delight in Him and to be captivated by His glorious power and grace, and to value Him above all other things on earth. All the rest of the commandments are the kinds of things that we will do from our hearts, if our hearts are truly delighted with and resting in the glory of God's grace.

Topics: Heart, Mean, Grace, God's Grace, Captivated

Don't coast through life without a passion.

source: - John Piper (2003). “Don't Waste Your Life”, Crossway

Topics: Passion, Coast, Waste Of Life

Waiting for the Lord in a season of darkness should not be a time of inactivity. We should do what we can do. And doing is often God's appointed remedy for despair.

Topics: Depression, Waiting, Darkness

Desire that your life count for something great! Long for your life to have eternal significance. Want this! Don’t coast through life without a passion.

Topics: Passion, Long, Christian Inspirational

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.

Topics: Powerful, Inspiration, Passion

It was becoming clearer and clearer that if I wanted to come to the end of my life and not say, “I’ve wasted it!” then I would need to press all the way in, and all the way up, to the ultimate purpose of God and join him in it. If my life was to have a single, all-satisfying, unifying passion, it would have to be God’s passion.

Topics: Christian, Inspiration, Passion, Purpose Of God

Marriage is not mainly about being or staying in love. It’s mainly about telling the truth with our lives. It’s about portraying something true about Jesus Christ and the way He relates to his people. It is about showing in real life the glory of the gospel.

source: - John Piper (2013). “This Momentary Marriage”, p.17, SPCK

Topics: Jesus, Real, People

Faith stands or falls on the truth that the future with God is more satisfying than the one promised by sin. Where this truth is embraced and God is cherished above all, the power of sin is broken. The power of sin is the power of deceit. Sin has power through promising a false future. In temptation sin comes to us and says: "The future with God on his narrow way is hard and unhappy, but the way I promise is pleasant and satisfying." The power of sin is in the power of this lie.

Topics: Lying, Fall, Broken

What could be a greater privilege than to listen to the voice of God, and be granted by God himself the ears to hear?

Topics: Voice, Ears, Privilege, Voice Of God

The ultimate aim of the gospel is the display of God’s glory.

Topics: Glory, Aim, Ultimate

The gospel is the good news that the everlasting and ever-increasing joy of the never-boring, ever-satisfying Christ is ours freely and eternally by faith in the sin-forgiving death and hope-giving resurrection of Jesus Christ.

source: - John Piper (2009). “Taste and See: Savoring the Supremacy of God in All of Life”, p.407, Multnomah

Topics: Jesus, Giving, Joy, Jesus Resurrection, Good News

The ultimate difference between God's wisdom and man's wisdom is how they relate to the glory of God's grace in Christ crucified. God's wisdom makes the glory of God's grace our supreme treasure. But man's wisdom delights in seeing himself as resourceful, self-sufficient, self determining, and not utterly dependent on God's free grace.

Topics: Men, Self, Differences, Self Sufficient

Don’t be surprised. There is nothing new under the sun. Only endless repackagings

Topics: Sun, Endless, Nothing New, Waste Of Life, Nothing New Under The Sun

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

source: - John Piper (2011). “Desiring God, Revised Edition: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist”, p.11, Multnomah

Topics: Sweet, Love Is, Roots, Sweet Life

We are all starved for the glory of God, not self. No one goes to the Grand Canyon to increase self-esteem. Why do we go? Because there is greater healing for the soul in beholding splendor than there is in beholding self.

Topics: Self Esteem, Healing, Soul, Grand Canyon, Glory Of God

There is a great gulf between the Christianity that wrestles with whether to worship at the cost of imprisonment and death, and the Christianity that wrestles with whether the kids should play soccer on Sunday morning.

Topics: Soccer, Morning, Kids, Sunday Morning

Where passion for God is weak, zeal for missions will be weak.

source: - John Piper (2010). “Let the Nations Be Glad!: The Supremacy of God in Missions”, p.36, Baker Academic

Topics: Passion, Missionary, Weak

Wimpy worldviews make wimpy Christians. And wimpy Christians won’t survive the days ahead.

Topics: Christian, Worldview

This is God's universal purpose for all Christian suffering: more contentment in God and less satisfaction in the world.

source: - John Piper (2011). “Desiring God, Revised Edition: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist”, p.265, Multnomah

Topics: Christian, Suffering, Contentment

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.

Topics: Long, Triumph, Way, Distaste

The highest mental health is not liking myself but being joyfully interested in everything but myself.

Topics: Mental Health, Highest

To love God passionately is to love truth passionately.

source: - John Piper (2009). “A Godward Life: Savoring the Supremacy of God in All of Life”, p.106, Multnomah

Topics: God Love, Truth Love

Be glad in the Lord and receive willingly from His Hand all that he designs for my holiness - both painful and pleasant.

Topics: Hands, Design, Holiness

The great danger of riches is that our affections will be carried away from God to His gifts.

Topics: Riches, Affection, Danger, Carried Away

If you must choose between loving someone and acting so that they feel loved, always choose to love them.

Topics: Loving Someone, Acting, Feels

Bitterness about your parents’ brokenness will kill you. Be the grace-filled end of generational sin in your family.

Topics: Parent, Grace, Bitterness

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

source: - John Piper (2011). “Desiring God, Revised Edition: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist”, p.148, Multnomah

Topics: Flower, Joy, Born

The importance of prayer rises in proportion to the importance of the things we should give up in order to pray

source: - John Piper (2013). “Brothers, We Are Not Professionals: A Plea to Pastors for Radical Ministry”, p.77, B&H Publishing Group

Topics: Prayer, Giving Up, Order

The presence of hope in the invincible sovereignty of God drives out fear.

source: - John Piper (2013). “This Momentary Marriage”, p.64, SPCK

Topics: Invincible, Sovereignty, Sovereignty Of God

When you see Jesus as your Treasure, the Spirit has blown through your heart.

Topics: Jesus, Heart, Grace

Giving is a way of having what you need.

Topics: Giving, Needs, Way

If we cannot claim to live sinless lives, then the only thing that can keep us from despairing before a holy God is that we have an Advocate in heaven and He pleads our case not on the basis of our perfection but of His propitiation.

Topics: Perfection, Heaven, Holy, Propitiation, Holy God

Don't wait for a feeling or love in order to share Christ with a stranger. You already love your heavenly Father, and you know that this stranger is created by Him, but separated from Him... so take those first steps in evangelism because you love God. It is not primarily out of compassion for humanity that we share our faith or pray for the lost; it is first of all, love for God.

source: - John Piper (2010). “Let the Nations Be Glad!: The Supremacy of God in Missions”, p.61, Baker Academic

Topics: Father, Love You, Compassion, Heavenly Father

If God were not just, there would be no demand for his Son to suffer and die. And if God were not loving, there would be no willingness for his Son to suffer and die. But God is both just and loving. Therefore his love is willing to meet the demands of his justice.

source: - John Piper (2005). “For Your Joy”

Topics: Son, Love Is, Justice

Every criticism or slight against you, warranted or not, received or endured humbly, is written in heaven for your reward.

Topics: Heaven, Criticism, Rewards

It is a fight from start to finish to be happy in God.

Topics: Fighting

To be a Christian is to move toward need, not comfort.

Topics: Christian, Moving, Comfort

You don't give God authority over your life. He has it, totally.

Topics: Giving, Over You, Authority

God made us in His own image so that His image would be shown.

Topics: Would Be, Made

The greatest act of freeing happened when Jesus died in our place and paid our debt.

Topics: Jesus, Debt, Happened

The assurance of the believer is not that God will save him even if he stops believing, but that God will keep him believing--God will sustain you in faith, he will make your hope firm and stable to the end. He will cause you to persevere.

Topics: Believe, Causes, Persevere

Whatever opposes prayer opposes the whole work of ministry.

source: - John Piper (2013). “Brothers, We Are Not Professionals: A Plea to Pastors for Radical Ministry”, p.75, B&H Publishing Group

Topics: Prayer, Ministry, Whole

In all the setbacks of your life as a believer, God is plotting for your joy.

Topics: Joy, Believer, Setback

Nothing makes God more supreme and more central in worship than when a people are utterly persuaded that nothing - not money or prestige or leisure or family or job or health or sports or toys or friends - nothing is going to bring satisfaction to their sinful, guilty, aching hearts besides God.

Topics: Sports, Jobs, Heart, Heart Ache

Lives of faith are the great mirror of the dependability of God.

source: - John Piper (2012). “Future Grace, Revised Edition: The Purifying Power of the Promises of God”, p.189, Multnomah

Topics: Mirrors, Dependability

Servanthood does not nullify leadership; it defines it. Jesus does not cease to be the Lion of Judah when He becomes the lamblike servant of the church.

source: - John Piper (2013). “This Momentary Marriage”, p.51, SPCK

Topics: Jesus, Church, Doe, Judah, Servanthood

Oh, how rare are the Christians who speak with a tender heart and have a theological backbone of steel.

Topics: Christian, Heart, Steel, Theological, Tender Hearts

Suffering for Jesus is temporary. Pleasure in Jesus is eternal.

Topics: Jesus, Suffering, Pleasure

We belittle God when we go through the outward motions of worship and take no pleasure in His person.

Topics: Worship, Pleasure, Belittle

The bloodline of Jesus is thicker, deeper, stronger than the bloodline of race, ethnicity and family.

Topics: Jesus, Race, Ethnicity, Race And Ethnicity, Race Ethnicity

When I believe in Jesus, I am united to Christ. Therefore, what he did and achieved becomes mine by this union through faith alone. His righteous life is imputed to me. What Christ achieved is counted as mine.

Topics: Jesus, Believe, Unions

God is not a killjoy; he just opposes what kills joy.

Topics: Joy, Killjoy

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.

Topics: Heart, Free Gifts, Buying Things, Loving Relationships, Basic Needs

Our main work is, by the spirit of God, with the Word of God, to portray the glories of God as more beautiful and more satisfying than anything.

Topics: Beautiful, Spirit, Glory, Spirit Of God

From eternity to eternity, the beauty of God is pervasive and practical. Ask him to open the eyes of your heart (Ephesians 1:18). Give your life to this quest - seeing and savoring more and more of the happifying beauty of God.

Topics: Heart, Eye, Giving, Savoring, Ephesians

God has ordained that our preaching become deeper and more winsome as we are broken, humbled, and made low and desperately dependent on grace by the trials of our lives.

Topics: Broken, Grace, Trials, Winsome

Christians belive in a sovereign God who never says "Oops". We believe that all our days ... are divine strokes on the canvas of our lives by the Master Artist who certified his skill, his power, and his love in the Masterpiece of Calvary. If you doubt His skill in painting your life - look at the Calvary

Topics: Christian, Believe, Artist

It is not surprising that prayer malfunctions when we try to make it a domestic intercom to call upstairs for more comforts in the den.

source: - John Piper (2010). “Let the Nations Be Glad!: The Supremacy of God in Missions”, p.65, Baker Academic

Topics: Prayer, Trying, Comfort, Malfunction