John Piper. Battling Unbelief: Defeating Sin with Superior Pleasure. Multnomah, 2007. 176 pp.
Battling Impatience
In God’s Place, At God’s Pace, By Future Grace
Impatience is a form of unbelief. It’s what we begin to feel when we start to doubt the wisdom of God’s timing or the goodness of God’s guidance. It springs up in our hearts when our plan is interrupted or shattered. It may be prompted by a long wait in a checkout line or a sudden blow that knocks out half our dreams. The opposite of impatience is not a glib denial of loss. It’s a deepening, ripening, peaceful willingness to wait for God in the unplanned place of obedience, and to walk with God at the unplanned pace of obedience—to wait in his place, and go at his pace. And the key is faith in future grace. . . .
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John Piper. God Is the Gospel: Meditations on God’s Love as the Gift of Himself. Crossway, 2005. 192 pp.
What the World Needs Most: The Gospel’s Greatest Gift—God
Today, as in every generation, it is stunning to watch the shift away from God as the all-satisfying gift of God’s love. It is stunning how seldom God himself is proclaimed as the greatest gift of the gospel. But the Bible teaches that the best and final gift of God’s love is the enjoyment of God’s beauty. “One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple” (Ps. 27:4).
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John Piper & Justin Taylor, eds. Suffering and the Sovereignty of God. Crossway, 2006. 256 pp.
Why God Appoints Suffering for His Servants
Why did God appoint for Paul to suffer so much as the prototype of the frontier missionary? He is sovereign. As every child knows he could toss Satan into the pit today if he wanted to and all his terrorizing of the church would be over. But God wills that the mission of the church advance through storm and suffering. What are the reasons? I will mention six.
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John Piper. What Jesus Demands from the World. Crossway, 2006. 400 pp.
Introduction
The aim of this book is God-glorifying obedience to Jesus. To that end I am seeking to obey Jesus’ last command: Make disciples of all nations . . . teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you (Matt. 28:19-20). Jesus final command was to teach all his commandments.
The Impossible Final Command
Actually, the final command was more precise than that. He did not say, Teach them all my commandments. He said, Teach them to observe all my commandments. You can teach a parrot all of Jesus commandments. But you cannot teach a parrot to observe them. Parrots will not repent, and worship Jesus, and lay up treasures in heaven, and love their enemies, and go out like sheep in the midst of wolves to herald the kingdom of God.
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John Piper. Contending for Our All: Defending Truth and Treasuring Christ in the Lives of Athanasius, John Owen, and J. Gresham Machen. Crossway, 2006. 192 pp.
There is a great lesson here for teachers and preachers: to hold young minds there should be both intellectual credibility and joyful, passionate zeal for Christ.
Paul made much of the truth of his message and the need to get it exactly right, even if the messenger was not exactly right. For example, in Philippians he was tolerant of those who with bad motives preached in order to make his imprisonment worse – because they were saying the objective truth about Christ.
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