John Piper

...the gospel has an answer to both pride and guilt.

The pursuit of joy in God is not optional. It is not an __xtra_ that a person might grow into after he comes to faith. It is not simply a way to __nhance_ your walk with the Lord. Until your heart has hit upon this pursuit, your __aith_ cannot please God. It is not saving faith. Saving faith is the confidence that if you sell all you have and forsake all sinful pleasures, the hidden treasure of holy joy will satisfy your deepest desires. Saving faith is the heartfelt conviction not only that Christ is reliable, but also that He is desirable. It is the confidence that He will come through with His promises and that what He promises is more to be desired than all the world.

The critical question for our generation__nd for every generation__s this: If you could have heaven, with no sickness, and with all thefriends you ever had on earth, and all the food you ever liked, andall the leisure activities you ever enjoyed, and all the natural beautiesyou ever saw, all the physical pleasures you ever tasted, and nohuman conflict or any natural disasters, could you be satisfied withheaven, if Christ were not there?

There is hope in forgiveness

But we also need stories. Great stories.

The fight for joy is first and always a fight to see.

Relativism poses as humble by saying: __e are not smart enough to know what the truth is__r if there is any universal truth._ It sounds humble. But look carefully at what is happening. It__ like a servant saying: I am not smart enough to know which person here is my master__r if I even have a master. The result is that I don__ have a master and I can be my own master. That is in reality what happens to relativists: In claiming to be too lowly to know the truth, they exalt themselves as supreme arbiter of what they can think and do. This is not humility. This is the essence of pride.

Let the freedom to fail give you the hope to fight.

He came to destroy sin because it is fatal.

The Apostle __aul__ antidote for wimpy Christians is weighty doctrine. . . .everything that exists__ncluding evil__s ordained by a holy and all-wise God to make the glory of Christ shine more brightly. We don__ make God. He makes us. We don__ decide what he is going to be like. He decides what he is going to be like. He decides what we are going to be like. He created the universe, and it has the meaning he gives it, not the meaning we give it. If we give it a meaning different from his, we are fools. . . . our eternal joy and strength and holiness depend on the solidity of this worldview putting strong fiber into the spine of our faith. Wimpy worldviews make wimpy Christians. And wimpy Christians won__ survive the days ahead.

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.

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.

Minimizing the importance of transformed feelings makes Christian conversion less supernatural and less radical. It is humanly manageable to make decisions of the will for Christ. No supernatural power is required to pray prayers, sign cards, walk aisles, or even stop sleeping around. Those are good. They just don__ prove that anything spiritual has happened. Christian conversion, on the other hand, is a supernatural, radical thing. The heart is changed. And the evidence of it is not just new decisions, but new affections, new feelings.

One great function of Bible verses: To keep us from drawing false inferences from other Bible verses.

...for poets, at least, experiencing something inexpressible does not mean silence. It's precisely the inexpressible something that poetry is meant to help us see or feel. If it were merely expressible - if there were nothing ineffable about it - there would be no need for a poem. But everywhere in the Bible we meet reality that exceeds our expectations.

Christmas cut history in two ages, the Age of Promise, and the Age of Fulfillment.

Did you wake up feeling fragile? Read the bible till you find a promise strong enough to carry you through the day.

The Spirit inspired the Word and therefore He goes where the Word goes. The more of God's Word you know and love, the more of God's Spirit you will experience.