John Piper
John Piper
John Stephen Piperis founder and teacher of desiringgod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is a Calvinist Baptist preacher and author who served as Pastor for Preaching and Vision of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota for 33 years. His books include ECPA Christian Book Award winners Spectacular Sins, What Jesus Demands from the World, Pierced by the Word, and God's Passion for His Glory, and bestsellers Don't Waste Your Life and The Passion of...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionClergyman
Date of Birth11 January 1946
CountryUnited States of America
Being happy in God is the way we glorify Him. This is the reason we were created. Delighting in God is not a mere preference or option of life; it is our joyful duty and should be the single passion of our lives.
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.
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.
Faith is born and sustained by the Word of God, and out of faith grows the flower of joy.
Love is the overflow of joy in God that meets the needs of others.
To see Him and know Him and be in His presence is the soul’s final feast. Beyond this there is no quest. Words fail. We call it pleasure, joy, delight. But these are weak pointers to the unspeakable experience.
Gratitude is the joy that arises in response to God’s good will toward us in all his gifts.
We make a god out of whatever we find most joy in. So find your joy in God and be done with all idolatry.
God is not a killjoy; he just opposes what kills joy.
Love is the overflow of joy in God! It is not duty for duty's sake, or right for right's sake. It is not a resolute abandoning of one's own good with a view solely to the good of the other person. It is first a deeply satisfying experience of the fullness of God's grace, and then a doubly satisfying experience of sharing that grace with another person.
Maintaining joy in God takes 'work'; that is, it's a fight against every impulse for alien joys and every obstacle in the way to seeing and savoring Christ.
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.
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.
The purpose of the Lord's Supper is to receive from Christ the nourishment and strength and hope and joy that come from feasting our souls on all that He purchased for us on the cross, especially His own fellowship.