Five years ago I picked up John Piper's Desiring God for the first time. As a young and impressionable college student, I was enraptured by his thoughtful and passionate persuasion that "The chief end of man is to glorify God by enjoying Him forever.",
The first few chapters completely informed my new understanding and affectionate embrace of the Doctrines of Grace. Piper's presentation of Calvinism is so joyful, winsome, and sweet. In it I found refreshment and delight for my soul.
Then about half way through the book, school started up again, life got busy... and extra reading "just for fun" got pushed aside. I've always wanted to go back and revisit the book that was so influential at that time in my life... but that I never finished.
Finally, it is finished :)!
I couldn't recommend this work highly enough to you. John MacArthur says that it is "A soul-stirring celebration of the pleasures of knowing God...a must-read for every Christian and a feast for the spiritually hungry." I concur.
Are you feeling hungry for God?
Do you find yourself dissatisfied with the fleeting pleasures that the world has to offer?
Are you a joyful and happy Christian? If not, do you want to be??? (I hope the answer for all of us is YES!)
Join Piper as he shows us (from Scripture) that:
Without a doubt Christians, of all people, should be joyful people.
God alone is the only Source of total satisfaction, and that to pursue it in anything less is idolatry.
A true Christian is a Christian Hedonist.
Our problem is not that we seek our pleasure too much, but too little.
"The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things- the beauty, the memory of our own past- are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshipers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have not yet visited." C.S. Lewis
"If I were to ask you why you have believed in Christ, why you have become Christians, every man will answer truly, 'For the sake of happiness.'" St. Augustine
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