John Piper Quotes

There is hope in forgiveness

Mission exists because worship doesn't.

The purpose of the Lord's Supper is to receive from Christ the nourishment and strength and hope and joy that come from feasting our souls on all that He purchased for us on the cross, especially His own fellowship.

The Meaning of Mature Femininity: At the heart of mature felinity is a freeing disposition to affirm, receive, and nurture strength and leadership from worthy men in ways appropriate to a woman's differing relationships.

CHRISTIAN LIVING MOVES from what God has freely done for us in Christ to what we should freely do for others.

I feel a special calling to impart hope to the church I serve.

Adjust your doctrine - or just minimize doctrine - to attract the world, and in the very process of attracting them, lose the radical truth that alone can set them free.

The suffering of sickness and the suffering of persecution have this in common: they are both intended by Satan for the destruction of our faith, and governed by God for the purifying of our faith... Christ sovereignly accomplishes His loving, purifying purpose, by overruling Satan's destructive attempts. Satan is always aiming to destroy our faith; but Christ magnifies His power in weakness.

Sin is what you do when you are not satisfied in God.

We give glory to God when we trust him to do what he has promised to do-especially when all human possibilities are exhausted. Faith glorifies God. That is why God planned for faith to be the way we are justified.

When all your favorite preachers are gone, and all their books forgotten, you will have your Bible. Master it. MASTER IT!

The missionary question is not, 'Where are there unbelievers?' and then send a missionary there. There are unbelievers everywhere! The missionary question is, 'Where are there people's who don't have any Christians in them or don't have a church strong enough to do the neighbor evangelism that we can do if we just want to do it?' That's the missionary question.

Our deeds are not the basis of our salvation, they are the evidence of our salvation. They are not foundation, they are demonstration.

'Worship' is the term we use to cover all the acts of the heart and mind and body that intentionally express the infinite worth of God. This is what we were created for, as God says in Isaiah 43:7, Everyone who is called by my name, and whom I have created for my glory. That means that we were all created for the purpose of expressing the infinite worth of God's glory. We were created to worship.

The strength of patience hangs on our capacity to believe that God is up to something good for us in all our delays and detours.

If at the cross every sin was covered, Satan's mouth is shut. He has no weapon. He can gum you but his fangs are gone.

There are two basic restrictions on marriage in the Bible: Number one, she should marry a man. Number two, he should be a Christian.

If you don't feel strong desires for the manifestation of the glory of God, it is not because you have drunk deeply and are satisfied. It is because you have nibbled so long at the table of the world. Your soul is stuffed with small things, and there is no room for the great.

Faith stands or falls on the truth that the future with God is more satisfying than the one promised by sin. Where this truth is embraced and God is cherished above all, the power of sin is broken. The power of sin is the power of deceit. Sin has power through promising a false future. In temptation sin comes to us and says: "The future with God on his narrow way is hard and unhappy, but the way I promise is pleasant and satisfying." The power of sin is in the power of this lie.

Suffering for Jesus is temporary. Pleasure in Jesus is eternal.

Anger devours almost all other good emotions. It deadens the soul. It numbs the heart to joy and gratitude and hope and tenderness and compassion and kindness.

We ought not speak too long about God with our minds before we turn and speak to God from our heart. We must stir a lot of prayer into the stew of our theology.

It is evil to justify killing (unborn babies) by the happy outcome of eternity for the one killed. This same justification could be used to justify killing one-year olds, or any heaven-bound believer for that matter. The Bible asks the question: "Shall we sin that grace may abound?" (Romans 6:1) And: "Shall we do evil that good may come?" (Romans 3:8). In both cases the answer is a resounding NO. It is presumption to step into God's place and try to make the assignments to heaven or to hell. Our duty is to obey God, not to play God.

"How are you doing?" - - - better than I deserve.

Does Christ get a good reputation because of the way we live? Is the excellence of Christ displayed in our lives? That should matter to us, not whether we ourselves are praised.

Do we eagerly long for the coming of Christ? Or do we want him to wait while our love affair with the world runs its course? That is the question that tests the authenticity of faith.

Sanctification is a community project.

Spiritual leadership is knowing where God wants people to be and taking the initiative to get them there by God's means in reliance on God's power.

Maintaining joy in God takes 'work'; that is, it's a fight against every impulse for alien joys and every obstacle in the way to seeing and savoring Christ.

The 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.

The apex of glorifying God is enjoying Him with the heart. But this is empty emotionalism where that joy is not awakened and sustained by true views of God for who He really is

Don't wait for a feeling or love in order to share Christ with a stranger. You already love your heavenly Father, and you know that this stranger is created by Him, but separated from Him... so take those first steps in evangelism because you love God. It is not primarily out of compassion for humanity that we share our faith or pray for the lost; it is first of all, love for God.

We can be content with simplicity because the deepest most satisfying delights God gives us through creation are free gifts from nature and from loving relationships with people. After your basic needs are met, accumulated money begins to diminish your capacity for these pleasures rather than increase them. Buying things contributes absolutely nothing to the heart's capacity for joy.

Wise people know that all their money belongs to God.

Books don't change people; paragraphs do, Sometimes even sentences.

Gratitude is the joy that arises in response to God’s good will toward us in all his gifts.

When you are deeply peaceful and confident that, because of Christ, God will bring you safely to his eternal kingdom and be the all-satisfying Treasure of your life forever, then you are free to see the truth, and love the truth, and speak the truth no matter what, and joyfully spread a passion for the truth whose name is Jesus.

Husbands and wives, recognize that in marriage you have become one flesh. If you live for your private pleasure at the expense of your spouse, you are living against yourself and destroying your joy. But if you devote yourself with all your heart to the holy joy of your spouse, you will also be living for your joy and making a marriage after the image of Christ and His church.

Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn't.

The Gospel is not a picture of adoption, adoption is a picture of the Gospel.

Life is not a straight line leading from one blessing to the next and then finally to heaven. Life is a winding and troubled road. Switchback after switchback. And the point of biblical stories like Joseph and Job and Esther and Ruth is to help us feel in our bones (not just know in our heads) that God is for us in all these strange turns. God is not just showing up after the trouble and cleaning it up. He is plotting the course and managing the troubles with far-reaching purposes for our good and for the glory of Jesus Christ.

If you are sufficient for your task, it's too small.

If the pursuit of God's glory is not ordered above the pursuit of man's good in the affections of the heart and the priorities of the Church, man will not be well served, and God will not be duly honored. I am not pleading for a diminishing of missions but for a magnifying of God. When the flame of worship burns with the heat of God's true worth, the light of missions will shine to the darkest peoples on earth. And I long for that day to come!

Avalanches of evil begin with a single pebble of sin.

This is God's universal purpose for all Christian suffering: more contentment in God and less satisfaction in the world.

Desire that your life count for something great! Long for your life to have eternal significance. Want this! Don’t coast through life without a passion.

Our concern with truth is simply an echo of our concern with God .

If truth does not lead to falling in love, it fails.