Quotes from John Piper

O Father, touch us with fresh faith that we might believe the incredible. The very pain of Christ that makes us despair is our salvation. Open our fearful hearts to receive the gospel. Waken the dead parts of our hearts that cannot feel what must be felt-that we are loved with the deepest, strongest, purest love in the universe.

So waiting is a holy work Of faith in God. Nor does there lurk Beneath the timing of his ways Some secret malice that displays Itself in holding back the flow Of future grace. God does not go From here to there by shortest routes; He makes a place for faith and doubts. Nor does he hasten on his way, But comes when it is best, today, Or maybe twenty years from now, Or more.

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

The reason God knows the future is because he plans the future and accomplishes it.

Genuine love is the glad effort to make others glad in God forever. Genuine love is being willing to suffer and die to draw as many people as we can into the pursuit and enjoyment of God.

The discipline to rise early is not as difficult as the discipline of going to bed. This did not used to be so. Before electricity and radio and television and the Internet, going to bed soon after dark was not so difficult. There was not much to do. Today the strongest allurements to stay up and be entertained are against us. Therefore, the battle against weariness, which makes us drowsy as soon as we open our Bible in the morning, has to be fought in the evening, not just in the morning.

Some of us are afraid of getting too emotional when we sing. But the problem isn't emotions. It's emotionalism. Emotionalism pursues feelings as ends in themselves. It's wanting to feel something with no regard for how that feeling is produced or its ultimate purpose.

the story of Ruth . . .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.

God's reality is overwhelmingly intrusive in all the details of life.

The domestication of God is a curse on preaching in our day. We need to recover reality and the language of majesty and holiness and awe and glory: "Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders?" (Exod. 15:11).

The Word frees us from smallness of mind (1 Kings 4:29) and from threatening confinements (Psalm 18:19).

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.