At the end of tennis season I gave our six graduating seniors from the team I help coach a bag of books with a video and one CD, Rebel, by the rapper Lecrae. One of the kids wrote me a note saying how he loves the CD and is listening to it daily.
One song on the CD I love is "Don’t Waste Your Life," which is the same title as John Piper’s book.
(Those who read my last blog on Haiti might like to check out an interesting essay written by Al Mohler called "Does God Hate Haiti?")
I was listening to a John Piper message on Hebrews 12, titled "The Painful Discipline of Our Heavenly Father," and appreciated this introduction, so I’m sharing it with you. I really enjoy John’s messages, and highly recommend that you download them, and put on an iPod or listen to in the car and on planes, or as you do housework or tinker in the garage. John’s life and ministry, and his insights and passion for God, have been a gift to me and many others. Download any of John’s hundreds of messages from www.desiringgod.org ...
As many of you know, I am on both Facebook and Twitter, where I frequently post short updates and devotional thoughts. Some people may ask if as a Christian, being on Facebook and Twitter and other social networking sites is really worth it, or just a waste of time.
John Piper addressed this in an article called Why and How I Am Tweeting:
I see two kinds of responses to social Internet media like blogging, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and others.
One says: These media tend to shorten attention spans, weaken discursive reasoning, lure people away from Scripture and prayer, disembody ...
I am often hearing people say these days that God has revealed himself to us in stories, and that story, not doctrine, is the framework in which we should see our faith.
I LOVE story (which is why I’ve written and enjoyed fiction and also love good biographies). However, story is NOT everything. There is also revealed propositional truth and many other forms of communication God has taken with us in his Word.
I love this blog from John Piper on this very subject. It’s not long so I’ll take the liberty of quoting it in its ...
Fasting seems to be an oft-neglected spiritual discipline for Christians these days. Do you have any thoughts or suggestions on fasting?
A few years ago I was involved in a study group with some younger men, and we went through Dallas Willard's book, The Spirit of the Disciplines. One of the issues we discussed was fasting. Below is what I wrote to them when we decided as a group to fast:
Fast for a full day. We came to this because fasting is one of the least practiced and/or understood of the disciplines among us.
Our schedules and ...
A couple of years ago I had the privilege of speaking at the Desiring God National Conference with John Piper, Jerry Bridges, and John MacArthur. But perhaps the greatest privilege was being with the other speaker, Dr. Helen Roseveare, missionary to the Congo. (Dr. Roseveare's biography is in Noel Piper's book Faithful Women and Their Extraordinary God, which you can read online.) I recently ran across this story from Helen:
Happy birthday to my favorite president, Abraham Lincoln. While he still held to some racist stereotypes, he managed to rise above the worldview of his era and affirm the wrongness of slavery and the rights of all people.
What Lincoln wrote below applies not only to slavery and racism, but to other human rights issues such as sexism and abortion:
You say A. is white, and B. is black. It is color, then; the lighter, having the right to enslave the darker? Take care. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with a ...
Readers of my books often question whether the doctrine of eternal rewards is biblical. They say, It seems self-centered to do good works so I will be rewarded.
We have so emphasized the idea of never acting in our own self-interest, that we ignore the continuous appeals of Scripture to be motivated by the fact that following our Lord is not only right, but smart. And sin is not only wrong, but stupid.
Read the blessings and curses of Deuteronomy. Read the wisdom and foolishness passages that pervade Proverbs. Satan has conned many Christians into a view of the Christian ...
Yesterday I received this question in an e-mail from Faith, a godly young woman I respect very much: As a Christian, should we vote for who we think should lead our country solely based on their stance on abortion? I have been thinking about this question and I am having a hard time putting my thoughts into words.
I'm the author of over 40 books and the founder and director of Eternal Perspective Ministries. I love Jesus, my wife Nanci, and our daughters, sons and five grandsons!
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