John Piper Quotes

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Thinking is one of the important ways that we put the fuel of knowledge on the fires of worship and service to the world.
John Piper Quotes: Thinking is one of the
He has made me wary of chronological snobbery. That is, he showed me that newness is no virtue and oldness is no vice. Truth and beauty and goodness are not determined by when they exist. Nothing is inferior for being old, and nothing is valuable for being modern. This has freed me from the tyranny of novelty and opened for me the wisdom of the ages.
John Piper Quotes: He has made me wary
God's work in us does not eliminate our work; it enables it. We work because he is the one at work in us. Therefore, the fight for joy is possible because God is fighting for us and through us.
John Piper Quotes: God's work in us does
God is love precisely because He relentlessly pursues the praises of His name in the hearts of His people.
John Piper Quotes: God is love precisely because
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.
John Piper Quotes: When I believe in Jesus,
Wise people know that all their money belongs to God.
John Piper Quotes: Wise people know that all
Christ died that we might live. This is the opposite of abortion. Abortion kills that someone might live differently.
John Piper Quotes: Christ died that we might
Seeing the glory of Jesus Christ in the gospel awakens joy.
John Piper Quotes: Seeing the glory of Jesus
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.
John Piper Quotes: God created me - and
Strong affections for God, rooted in and shaped by the truth of Scripture - this is the bone and marrow of Biblical worship.
John Piper Quotes: Strong affections for God, rooted
Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn't.
John Piper Quotes: Missions is not the ultimate
If you must choose between loving someone and acting so that they feel loved, always choose to love them.
John Piper Quotes: If you must choose between
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.
John Piper Quotes: Anger devours almost all other
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.
John Piper Quotes: Waiting for the Lord in
Sanctification is a community project.
John Piper Quotes: Sanctification is a community project.
The key to endurance in the cause of self-sacrificing love is not heroic willpower, but deep, unshakable confidence that the joy we have tasted in fellowship with Christ will not disappoint us in death.
John Piper Quotes: The key to endurance in
God does not mean for us to be passive. He means for us to fight the fight of faith--the fight for joy. And the central strategy is to preach the gospel to yourself. This is war. Satan is preaching for sure. If we remain passive, we surrender the field to him. So Lloyd-Jones gets specific and gets tough:
The main art in the matter of spiritual living is to know how to handle yourself. You have to take yourself in hand, you have to address yourself, preach to yourself, question yourself... You must turn on yourself, upbraid yourself, condemn yourself, exhort yourself, and say to yourself: "Hope thou in God"--instead of muttering in this depressed, unhappy way, and then you must go on to remind yourself of God, who God is, and... what God has done, and what God has pledged himself to do. Then having done that, end on this great note: defy yourself, and defy other people, and defy the devil and the whole world, and say with this man: "I shall yet praise Him for the help of His countenance, who is also the help of my countenance and my God." [from Psalm 42:5]
Of course, the "self" is not the only one who talks to us in our head. So does the devil, and so do other people as we replay their comments in our memories. Therefore, when Lloyd-Jones tells us to preach to ourselves, he knows we must be addressing all these joy-killing messages. That's why he talks about defying self, Satan and other people. When we preach the gospel to ourselves, we are addressing every word of
John Piper Quotes: God does not mean for
The new covenant is purchased by the blood of Christ, effected by the Spirit of Christ, and appropriated by faith in Christ.
John Piper Quotes: The new covenant is purchased
Isn't it ironic that today people say, 'If you know the love of God, you don't have to worry when you go on in sin.' But the apostle John said, 'If you know the love of God, you won't be able to go on in sin.'
John Piper Quotes: Isn't it ironic that today
Forgiveness costs us nothing. All our costly obedience is the fruit, not the root, of being forgiven. That's why we call it grace.
John Piper Quotes: Forgiveness costs us nothing. All
The fight for joy in Christ is not a fight to soften the cushion of Western comforts. It is a fight for strength to live a life of self-sacrificing love.
John Piper Quotes: The fight for joy in
The hardened disobedience of men's hearts leads not to the frustration of God's plans, but to their fruition.
John Piper Quotes: The hardened disobedience of men's
But it would be a great mistake to think that the awakening of desire for the Bridegroom would produce a wave of monastic withdrawal into the fasting and prayer of passive waiting. That is not what the awakening of desire for Christ would produce. It would produce a radical, new commitment to complete the task of world evangelization, no matter what the cost. And fasting would not become a pacifistic discipline for private hopes, but a fearsome missionary weapon in the fight of faith.
John Piper Quotes: But it would be a
The one God has chosen unconditionally he keeps invincibly. Being and staying a believer is decisively of sovereign grace.
John Piper Quotes: The one God has chosen
It doesn't take a new heart to want the psychological relief of forgiveness, or the removal of God's wrath, or the inheritance of God's world. All these things are understandable without any spiritual change. You don't need to be born again to want these things. The devils want them.
John Piper Quotes: It doesn't take a new
Death is like my car. It takes me where I want to go.
John Piper Quotes: Death is like my car.
Betrayed by Judas, denied by Peter, abandoned by the eleven, forsaken by God. Darkness, you get one hour. Then you die.
John Piper Quotes: Betrayed by Judas, denied by
We belittle God when we go through the outward motions of worship and take no pleasure in His person.
John Piper Quotes: We belittle God when we
Pragmatism and subjectivism obscure the reality of the truth. They engage the mind, but they make it the servant of our desires and our work. But they can't answer which desires I should pursue and which work is worthwhile.
John Piper Quotes: Pragmatism and subjectivism obscure the
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).
John Piper Quotes: On the contrary, Christian Hedonists
The goal of missions is the gladness of the peoples in the greatness of God.
John Piper Quotes: The goal of missions is
All the evils in the world come not because our desires for happiness are too strong, but because they are so weak that we settle for fleeting pleasures that do not satisfy our deepest souls, but in the end destroy them. The root of all evil is that we are the kind of people who settle for the love of money instead of the love of God (1 Timothy 6:10).
John Piper Quotes: All the evils in the
The essence of faith is being satisfied with all that God is for us in Jesus.
John Piper Quotes: The essence of faith is
When you bow down your head to pray
Let the first thing that you say
Be a lowly word and meek:
I admit that I am weak.
John Piper Quotes: When you bow down your
God is not beholden to us at all. He doesn't owe us anything.
John Piper Quotes: God is not beholden to
And, Father, most of all, you taught
Me there's a Pow'r in love that naught
Can thwart, and that it moves where truth
And courage speak, and neither youth
Nor age can hinder its success,
But only fear and quietness.
John Piper Quotes: And, Father, most of all,
My biggest concern about the effects of the prosperity movement is that it diminishes Christ by making him less central and less satisfying than his gifts.
John Piper Quotes: My biggest concern about the
Knowing and thinking exist for the sake of love
for the sake of building people up in faith. Thinking that produces pride instead of love is not true thinking.
John Piper Quotes: Knowing and thinking exist for
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.
John Piper Quotes: Christ did not die to
Christian, be a Christian: live by faith; walk by the Spirit; serve in the strength that God supplies.
John Piper Quotes: Christian, be a Christian: live
If we come with a chip on our shoulder that there is nothing we can learn or no benefit we can get, we will prove ourselves infallible on both counts.
John Piper Quotes: If we come with a
The Calvary road with Jesus is not a joyless road. It is a painful one, but it is a profoundly happy one. When we choose the fleeting pleasures of comfort and security over the sacrifices and sufferings of missions and evangelism and ministry and love, we choose against joy.
John Piper Quotes: The Calvary road with Jesus
My Paradise: With Christ. Not sinning. No pain. New earth. Precious in that order.
John Piper Quotes: My Paradise: With Christ. Not
Your mind was made to know and love God.
John Piper Quotes: Your mind was made to
Knowledge about Him will not do. Work for Him will not do. We must have personal, vital fellowship with Him; otherwise, Christianity becomes a joyless burden.
John Piper Quotes: Knowledge about Him will not
America is the first culture in jeopardy of amusing itself to death.
John Piper Quotes: America is the first culture
Paul worked hard. He did not say that God's grace made his work unnecessary. He said God's grace made his work possible.
John Piper Quotes: Paul worked hard. He did
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.
John Piper Quotes: Does not the Old Testament
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.
John Piper Quotes: The greatest cause in the
Fruit does not make a tree good. Fruit does not give life. Fruit is a sign of life and reality.
John Piper Quotes: Fruit does not make a
Obedience does not consist in paying God back and thus turning grace into a trade. Obedience comes from trusting in God for more grace - future grace - and thus magnifying the infinite resources of God's love and power.
John Piper Quotes: Obedience does not consist in
James warns against the pride of presumption in speaking of
the simplest plans in life without a due submission to the overarching
sovereignty of God over the day's agenda. Man's plans might be interrupted by God's decision to take the life he gave.
John Piper Quotes: James warns against the pride
If anyone is going to see the gospel as true and good, satanic blindness and natural deadness must be overcome by the power of God. This is why the Bible says that even though the gospel foolishness to many, yet 'to those who are called ... Christ [is] the power of God and the wisdom of God' (1 Corinthians 1:24). The 'calling' is the merciful act of God to remove natural deadness and satanic blindness, so that we see Christ as true and good. The merciful act is itself a blood-bought gift of Christ. Look to him, and pray that God would enable you to see and embrace the gospel of Christ.
John Piper Quotes: If anyone is going to
The most glorious thing about God is that he is so completely, fully self-sufficient that the glory of the fullness of his being overflows in truth and grace for his creatures. He doesn't need us. And therefore in his fullness he overflows for us. Such is the grace we receive at Christmas.
John Piper Quotes: The most glorious thing about
if God's glory is the only all-satisfying reality in the universe, then to try to do good for people, without aiming to show them the glory of God and ignite in them a delight in God, would be like treating fever with cold packs when you have penicillin. The apostle Paul warns that I can "give all my possessions to feed the poor, and . . . deliver my body to be burned," and still "not have love" (1 Cor. 13:3). The final reason for this is that man is not the center of true virtue, God is. So
John Piper Quotes: if God's glory is the
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.
John Piper Quotes: Satan's aim is to destroy
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.
John Piper Quotes: We should all fortify ourselves
Books don't change people; paragraphs do, Sometimes even sentences.
John Piper Quotes: Books don't change people; paragraphs
The great barrier to worship among God's people is not that we are always seeking our own satisfaction, but that our seeking is so weak and half-hearted that we settle for little sips at broken cisterns when the fountain of life is just over the next hill.
John Piper Quotes: The great barrier to worship
The church is not called to be responsible for the way unbelievers run their lives. But we are called to be responsible, by the power of the Spirit and for the glory of Jesus, for the way believers live and the kind of relationships that are cultivated in the fellowship of the church.
John Piper Quotes: The church is not called
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 Quotes: We do not choose suffering
The importance of prayer rises in proportion to the importance of the things we should give up in order to pray
John Piper Quotes: The importance of prayer rises
Have you ever wondered what it feels like to have a love for the lost? This is a term we use as part of our Christian jargon. Many believers search their hearts in condemnation, looking for the arrival of some feeling of benevolence that will propel them into bold evangelism. It will never happen. It is impossible to love "the lost". You can't feel deeply for an abstraction or a concept. You would find it impossible to love deeply an unfamiliar individual portrayed in a photograph, let alone a nation or a race or something as vague as "all lost people".
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.
John Piper Quotes: Have you ever wondered what
The vast majority of abortions are performed between the seventh and tenth week when the baby is already sucking his thumb, recoiling from pricking, responding to sound. All his organs are present, the brain is functioning, the heart is pumping, the liver is making blood cells, the kidneys are cleaning fluids, and there is a fingerprint. His genetic code is uniquely and unquestionably human. And, if we are willing, he can be seen by ultrasound.
John Piper Quotes: The vast majority of abortions
We ought not speak too long about God with our minds before we turn and speak to God from our heart. We must stir a lot of prayer into the stew of our theology.
John Piper Quotes: We ought not speak too
God created us in his image, male and female, with personhood and sexual passions, so that when he comes to us in this world there would be these powerful words and images to describe the promises and the pleasures of our covenant relationship with him through Christ.
John Piper Quotes: God created us in his
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.
John Piper Quotes: Loving God with all our
It is evil to justify killing (unborn babies) by the happy outcome of eternity for the one killed. This same justification could be used to justify killing one-year olds, or any heaven-bound believer for that matter. The Bible asks the question: "Shall we sin that grace may abound?" (Romans 6:1) And: "Shall we do evil that good may come?" (Romans 3:8). In both cases the answer is a resounding NO. It is presumption to step into God's place and try to make the assignments to heaven or to hell. Our duty is to obey God, not to play God.
John Piper Quotes: It is evil to justify
The reason we need a ransom to be paid for us is that we have sold ourselves into sin and have been alienated from a holy God. When Jesus gave his life as a ransom, our slave masters, sin and death and the Devil, had to give up their claim on us. And the result was that we could be adopted into the family of God.
John Piper Quotes: The reason we need a
I measure Your love for me by the magnitude of the wrath I deserved, and the wonder of Your mercy by putting Christ in my place.
John Piper Quotes: I measure Your love for
In all of knowable reality, God is unique. He is knowable not like the multiplication table or the table of elements; he alone is knowable as the one totally in control of being known. He is not at the disposal of the human mind. He is known when he wills to be known. Yet he is known in and through created reality, which is known naturally. Therefore the glory of God is exalted most not when we know God apart from observation and reading and study, but when we know God as a result of his free and gracious self-revelation in and through our earnest observation of and meditation on his work and Word in history.
John Piper Quotes: In all of knowable reality,
Human beings were put on the planet to depend upon their Creator and to worship their Creator at every point in every sphere of culture.
John Piper Quotes: Human beings were put on
Would you want to go to heaven if God were not there, only His gifts?
John Piper Quotes: Would you want to go
Evangelicals are distraught over the state of America because they have not been taught that we're aliens here.
John Piper Quotes: Evangelicals are distraught over the
I am wired by nature to love the same toys that the world loves. I start to fit in. I start to love what others love. I start to call earth "home." Before you know it, I am calling luxeries "needs" and using my money just the way unbelievers do. I begin to forget the war. I don't think much about people perishing. Missions and unreached people drop out of my mind. I stop dreaming about the triumphs of grace. I sink into a secular mind-set that looks first to what man can do, not what God can do. It is a terrible sickness. And I thank God for those who have forced me again and again toward a wartime mind-set.
John Piper Quotes: I am wired by nature
Nothing is more vital than prayer in Christian existence, and few things are more vulnerable to neglect.
John Piper Quotes: Nothing is more vital than
Sin carries in it its own misery.
John Piper Quotes: Sin carries in it its
Humility is the flip side of giving God all the glory. Humility means reveling in his grace, not our goodness.
John Piper Quotes: Humility is the flip side
It is possible to experience true divine wonders in your conversion but never to be taught a true description of what your experience is. Then someone starts to describe your experience in words you have never heard, and in ways you have never understood, and suddenly the strange words all sound exactly right.
John Piper Quotes: It is possible to experience
Do not say, 'But it is hypocritical to thank God with my tongue when I don't feel thankful in my heart.' There is such a thing as hypocritical thanksgiving. Its aim is to conceal ingratitude and get the praise of men. That is not your aim. Your aim in loosing your tongue with words of gratitude is that God would be merciful and fill your words with the emotion of true gratitude. You are not seeking the praise of men; you are seeing the mercy of God. You are not hiding the hardness of ingratitude, but hoping for the in-breaking of the Spirit.

Thanksgiving with the Mouth Stirs Up Thankfulness in the Heart

Moreover, we should probably ask the despairing saint, 'Do you know your heart so well that you are sure the words of thanks have no trace of gratitude in them?' I, for one, distrust my own assessment of my motives. I doubt that I know my good ones well enough to see all the traces of contamination. And I doubt that I know my bad ones well enough to see the traces of grace. Therefore, it is not folly for a Christian to assume that there is a residue of gratitude in his heart when he speaks and sings of God's goodness even though he feels little or nothing. To this should be added that experience shows that doing the right thing, in the way I have described, is often the way toward being in the right frame. Hence Baxter gives this wise counsel to the oppressed Christian:

'Resolve to spend most of your time in thanksgiving and praising God. If y
John Piper Quotes: Do not say, 'But it
If you remove enjoyment of God from faith in God, it ceases to be faith.
John Piper Quotes: If you remove enjoyment of
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.
John Piper Quotes: Taken as a whole, the
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.
John Piper Quotes: Suffering in the path of
Did you wake up feeling fragile? Read the bible till you find a promise strong enough to carry you through the day.
John Piper Quotes: Did you wake up feeling
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.
John Piper Quotes: Do we eagerly long for
DOING is often God's remedy for despair.
John Piper Quotes: DOING is often God's remedy
Faithfulness is only half the equation. God expects fruitfulness as well.
John Piper Quotes: Faithfulness is only half the
The fight for joy is first and always a fight to see.
John Piper Quotes: The fight for joy is
This is God's universal purpose for all Christian suffering: more contentment in God and less satisfaction in the world.
John Piper Quotes: This is God's universal purpose
His Son and his Book and his world are the revelation of his glory. He has made the knowledge of himself possible. The function of mystery in the awakening of God-glorifying joy is like the unexplored mountain ranges you can barely see from the magnificent cliffs where you worship. You have seen much
if only a fraction. You have climbed. You know these mountains. God has made himself known in the mountain ranges of the Bible in such a way that all the discoveries of eternity will be the revelation of the God you already know truly in Jesus Christ. Therefore, the joy you have in what you know of God is intensified by the expectation that there is so much more to see. The mystery of what you don't know gets its God-glorifying power from what you do know. God
John Piper Quotes: His Son and his Book
We Boast Best in the Cross When We Bear It
John Piper Quotes: We Boast Best in the
Now unto him who is able to strengthen you ... be glory.
John Piper Quotes: Now unto him who is
This is why it is often called sovereign grace: it raises the dead. The dead do not raise themselves. God does by his grace. And it is this "glorious grace" that will be praised for all eternity.
John Piper Quotes: This is why it is
The way of the cross is the way of suffering. Christians are called to die, not kill, in order to show the world how they are loved by Christ.
John Piper Quotes: The way of the cross
America today is a "save yourself" society if there ever was one. But does it really work? The underdeveloped societies suffer from one set of diseases: tuberculosis, malnutrition, pneumonia, parasites, typhoid, cholera, typhus, etc. Affluent America has virtually invented a whole new set of diseases: obesity, arteriosclerosis, heart disease, strokes, lung cancer, venereal disease, cirrhosis of the liver, drug addiction, alcoholism, divorce, battered children, suicide, murder. Take your choice. Labor-saving machines have turned out to be body-killing devices. Our affluence has allowed both mobility and isolation of the nuclear family, and as a result, our divorce courts, our prisons and our mental institutions are flooded. In saving ourselves we have nearly lost ourselves.
John Piper Quotes: America today is a
Marriage is not mainly about prospering economically; it is mainly about displaying the covenant-keeping love between Christ and his church. Knowing Christ is more important than making a living. Treasuring Christ is more important than bearing children. Being united to Christ by faith is a greater source of marital success than perfect sex and double-income prosperity.
John Piper Quotes: Marriage is not mainly about
Whenever the strength of God is not recognized as the source of our strength, we are breaking the First Commandment: Do not have any gods before me.
John Piper Quotes: Whenever the strength of God
The Meaning of Mature Femininity: At the heart of mature felinity is a freeing disposition to affirm, receive, and nurture strength and leadership from worthy men in ways appropriate to a woman's differing relationships.
John Piper Quotes: The Meaning of Mature Femininity:
This assumes that the glory of Christ is our highest treasure, not health, wealth, family or even life. So preaching must continually show not that Jesus is the means to prosperity but that he is better than prosperity.
John Piper Quotes: This assumes that the glory
When we depend upon organizations, we get what organizations can do; when we depend upon education, we get what education can do; when we depend upon man, we get what man can do; but when we depend upon prayer, we get what God can do. A. C. Dixon
John Piper Quotes: When we depend upon organizations,
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