...we should all fortify ourselves against the dark hours of depression by cultivating a deep distrust of the certainties of despair. Despair is relentless in the certainties of its pessimism. But we have seen again and again, from our own experience and others', that absolute statements of hopelessness that we make in the dark are notoriously unreliable. Our dark certainties are not sureties.
John PiperThe further you go in the revealed thoughts of God, the clearer you see that God's aim in creating the world was to display the value of his own glory.
John PiperSometimes people stumble over this vastness in relation to the apparent insignificance of man. It does seem to make us infinitesimally small. But the meaning of this magnitude is not mainly about us. Itโs about Godโฆ The reason for โwastingโ so much space on a universe to house a speck of humanity is to make a point about our maker, not us.
John PiperIf you want to be a conduit for God's grace, you don't have to be lined with gold. Copper will do.
John PiperWhat defines us as Christians is not most profoundly that we have come to know him but that he took note of us and made us his own.
John PiperWe can say that true gratitude does not give rise to the debtor's ethic because it gives rise to faith in future grace. With true gratitude there is such a delight in the worth of God's past grace, that we are driven on to experience more and more of it in the future...it is done by transforming gratitude into faith as it turns from contemplating the pleasures of past grace and starts contemplating the promises of the future.
John Piper