John Piper Quotes

John Piper Quotes

In other words, all the highest aims of language are decisively the work
of God. They are decisively supernatural. And no amount of poetic
effort or expertise in the use of words can bring about the great aims
of life if God withholds his saving power.

Tasks don't have to be high-impact to be worthy of high effort. Most things we do in any given day are relatively low impact. The cumulative impact of thousands of low-impact test is huge. These tasks can be transposed into worship.

... the mind was designed not to defend what we want, but to discover what is ultimately true, which should shape our wants and satisfy them more deeply with God. The purpose of the mind is not to rationalize subjective preferences, but to recognize objective reality and to help the heart revel in God.

Here was an absolutely compelling road sign. Stay on the road of objective truth - there is objective being and objective value. Stay on the road. There is Truth. There is a Point and Purpose and Essence to it all. Keep searching. You will find it.

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

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.

The end of the creation is that God may communicate happiness to the creature

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.

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.

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.

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.

The greatest cause in the world is joyfully rescuing people from hell, meeting their earthly needs, making them glad in God, and doing it with a kind, serious pleasure that makes Christ look like the Treasure he is.

Without a spiritual wakefulness to divine purposes and connections in all things, we will not know things for what they truly are.

The only people who soul can truly magnify the Lord are...people who acknowledge their lowly estate and are overwhelmed by the condescension of the magnificent God.

Your mind was made to know and love 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.

There is hope in forgiveness

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.

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.

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

We are not as Christ-centered and cross-cherishing as we should be, because we do not ponder the truth that everything good, and everything bad that God turns for the good, was purchased by the sufferings of Christ.

O, how easy it is to do religious things if other people are watching! Preaching, praying, attending church, reading the bible, acts of kindness and charity-they all take on a certain pleasantness of the ego if we know that others will find out about them and think well of us. It is a deadly addiction for esteem that we have.

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.

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

For the mind of faith, a promised act of God is as good as done.

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

Imagination is the faculty of the mind that God has given us to make the communication of his beauty beautiful.

An eye for beauty instead of bleakness might have lightened some of his load.

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.

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.

On the contrary, Christian Hedonists are persuaded with Edwards that the only affections that magnify God's value are those that come from true apprehensions of His glory. If the feast of worship is rare in the land, it is because there is a famine of the Word of God (Amos 8:11-12).

The Bible says he was raised not just after the blood-shedding, but by it. This means that what the death of Christ accomplished was so full and so prefect that the resurrection was the reward and vindication of Christ's achievement in death.

Go, send, or disobey.

A prayerless Christian is like a bus driver trying alone to push his bus out of a rut because he doesn't know Clark Kent is on board.

All that looks like reality to us is dependent on God. There is creation and Creator, nothing more. And creation gets all its meaning and purpose from God.

Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” So we can confidently say, “The Lord is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me?” (Hebrews 13:5–6)

Does not the Old Testament promise that God will prosper His people? Indeed! God increases our yield so that by giving we can prove that our yield is not our god. God does not prosper a man’s business so he can move from a Ford to a Cadillac. God prospers a business so that thousands of unreached peoples can be reached with the gospel.

But to enjoy him we must know him. Seeing is savoring. If he remains a blurry, vague fog, we may be intrigued for a season. But we will not be stunned with joy, as when the fog clears and you find yourself on the brink of some vast precipice.

There would be no obstacles to overcome. We won’t fight for joy in heaven.
But we are not there yet.

If we were perfect - if there were
no remaining corruption in our hearts - there would be no fight. There would be no obstacles to overcome. We won’t fight for joy in heaven.
But we are not there yet.

...childlike wonder and awe have died. The scenery and poetry and music of the majesty of God have dried up like a forgotten peach at the back of the refrigerator.

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.

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.

Therefore everything that you enjoy in Christ - as a Christian, as a person who trusts Christ - is owing to the death of Christ.

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