God's Purposes in the Recession

John Piper preached a helpful message recently titled, "What is the Recession For?" He gives 5 of God's purposes in the recession: (1) To expose sin and bring repentance, (2) To awaken us to world poverty, (3) To relocate the roots of our joy in His grace, rather than in our goods, (4) To guard His glory by advancing His saving mission in the world precisely when human resources are low, and (5) To bring His church to care for her hurting members and grow in love. To read, listen, or watch the sermon, follow the above link.

When I Don't Desire God, ch. 2

Here are some quotes that struck me from chapter 2 of, When I Don't Desire God, by John Piper:

Piper discusses the relationship between desire for God and delight in God. "Desire would not exist if the thing enjoyed had not already been tasted. That's how the heart comes to feel something is desirable. Desire is awakened by tastes of pleasure. The taste may be ever so small. But if there is no taste at all of the desirability of something, then there will be no desire for it. In other words, desire is a form of the very pleasure that is anticipated with the arrival of the thing desired. It is, you might say, the pleasure itself experienced in the form of anticipation" (page 26).

"Finite creatures like us, who have a spiritual taste for the glory of God, will always want more of God than we presently experience--even in eternity. There will always be more of God to enjoy. Which means there will always be holy desire--forever" (pages 27-28).

"Our desires--no matter how small--have been awakened by the spiritual taste we once had of the presence of God. They are an evidence that we have tasted" (page 28).

"In the age to come, desire for more of God will never be experienced with impatience or ingratitude or frustration. All desire in the age to come will be the sweetest anticipation, rooted ever more deeply in the enlarging memories of joy and in the ever-gathering pleasures of gratitude. God will not take from us the pleasure of anticipated pleasures. He will heighten it. He will give us for all eternity the perfect intermingling of present pleasure and anticipation of future pleasure. Anticipation will be stripped of all frustration. Its ache will be a wholly pleasant ache" (page 28).

"Desire and delight have this in common: Neither is the Object desired or delighted in. God is. I make this obvious point because all of us from time to time speak loosely and say that the aim of our pursuit is joy. Or we way that we want to be happy. Those are not false or evil statements.... But the loose way of talking can be misleading. Both ways of saying it can be taken to mean: The object of our wants is ultimately a psychological expreience of happiness without any regard to what makes us happy. In other words, they may mean: the final object of our pursuit is joy itself, rather than the beauty of what we find joy in" (page 29). Piper quotes C. S. Lewis, who explains that seeking joy itself rather than God will leave you empty. "I had been equally wrong in supposing that I desired Joy itself. Joy itself, considered simply as an event in my own mind, turned out to be of no value at all. All the value lay in that of which Joy was the desiring" (Lewis, Surprised by Joy, in Piper, page 30).

"God is glorified in his people by the way we experience him, not merely by the way we think about him. Indeed the devil thinks more true thoughts about God in one day than a saint does in a lifetime, and God is not honored by it. The problem with the devil is not his theology, but his desires" (pages 30-31).

"I have found for thirty years that preaching and teaching about God's demand that we delight in him more than in anything else breaks and and humbles people, and makes them desperate for true conversion and true Christianity. Oh, how easy it is to think we are what we ought to be when the emotions are made peripheral. Mere thoughts and mere deeds are manageable by the carnal religious mind. But the emotions--they are the weathercock of the heart. Nothing shows the direction of the deep winds of the soul like the demand for radical, sin-destroying, Christ-exalting joy in God" (page 31).

When I Don't Desire God, ch. 1

I have started reading, When I Don't Desire God: How to Fight for Joy, by John Piper. I really appreciated the foreward and first chapter. Piper writes in an even more personal and pastoral style than usual. Here are some sentences that stood out to me:

"When all is said and done, only God can create joy in God. This is why the old saints not only pursued joy but prayed for it (Ps 90:15). To be satisfied by the beatuy of God does not come naturally to sinful people. By nature we get more pleasure from God's gifts than from himself. Therefore this book calls for deep and radical change--which only God can give. But if I didn't believe God uses means to awaken joy in himself, I would not have written this book" (page 9).

"Christian Hedonism is a liberating and devastating doctrine. It teaches that the value of God shines more brightly in the soul that finds deepest satisfaction in him. Therefore it is liberating because it endorses our inborn desire for joy. And it is devastating because it reveals that no one desires God with the passion he demands. Paradoxically, many people experience both of these truths. That certainly is my own experience" (page 13).

"My indwelling sin stands in the way of my full satisfaction in God. It opposes and perverts my pursuit of God. It opposes by making other things look more desirable than God. And it perverts by making me think I am pursuing joy in God when, in fact, I am in love with his gifts. I discovered what better saints than I have found before me: The full enjoyment of God is my ultimate home, but I am still far off and only on the way" (page 14).

"Conversion is the creation of new desires, not just new duties; new delights, not just new deeds; new treasures, not just new tasks" (page 16).

"The misunderstanding of this book that I want most to avoid is that I am writing to make well-to-do Western Christians comfortable, as if the joy I have in mind is psychological icing on the cake of already superficial Christianity. Therefore let me say clearly here at the beginning that the joy I write to awaken is the sustaining strength of mercy, missions, and martyrdom" (pages 19-20).

"I am addressing the question: 'How can I obtain or recover a joy in Christ that is so deep and so strong that it will free me from bondage to Western comforts and security, and will impel me into sacrifices of mercy and missions, and will sustain me in the face of martyrdom?'" (page 20)