Every sermon is a "salvation sermon"

Preaching is a means of grace to assist the saints to persevere. Perseverance is necessary for final salvation. Therefore, every sermon is a "salvation sermon"—not just because of its aim to convert sinners, but also in its aim to preserve the holy affections of the saints and so enable them to confirm their calling and election and be saved.
  -- p81, The Supremacy of God in Preaching by John Piper

O, the triviality! Flee from the triviality!

Of course, we do not use the word cool to describe true greatness. It is a small word. That’s the point. It’s cheap. And it’s what millions of young people live for. Who confronts them with urgency and tears? Who pleads with them not to waste their lives? Who takes them by the collar, so to speak, and loves them enough to show them a life so radical and so real and so costly and Christ-saturated that they feel the emptiness and triviality of their CD collection and their pointless conversations about passing celebrities? Who will waken what lies latent in their souls, untapped—a longing not to waste their lives? 

Oh, that young and old would turn off the television, take a long walk, and dream about feats of courage for a cause ten thousand times more important than American democracy—as precious as that is. If we would dream and if we would pray, would not God answer? Would he withhold from us a life of joyful love and mercy and sacrifice that magnifies Christ and makes people glad in God? I plead with you, as I pray for myself, set your face like flint to join Jesus on the Calvary road. “Let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured. For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come” (Hebrews 13:13-14). When they see our sacrificial love—radiant with joy—will they not say, “Christ is great”? 

 -pp. 128-129 from Don't Waste Your Life by John Piper

Oh, you precious soul! Flee from the triviality of this age, and live to display what is truly significant, the glory of God through Jesus Christ!

Wasting life by simply avoiding badness and providing for the family

Oh, how many lives are wasted by people who believe that the Christian life means simply avoiding badness and providing for the family. So there is no adultery, no stealing, no killing, no embezzlement, no fraud—just lots of hard work during the day, and lots of TV and PG-13 videos in the evening (during quality family time), and lots of fun stuff on the weekend—woven around church (mostly). This is life for millions of people. Wasted life. We were created for more, far more.
 - p.119-120, Don't Waste Your Life by John Piper

Taking risks for the sake of God's Name.

And now what about you? Are you caught in the enchantment of security, paralyzed from taking any risks for the cause of God? Or have you been freed by the power of the Holy Spirit from the mirage of Egyptian safety and comfort? Do you men ever say with Joab, “For the sake of the name, I’ll try it! And may the Lord do what seems good to him”? Do you women ever say with Esther, “For the sake of Christ, I’ll try it! And if I perish, I perish”? 

There is more than one danger in calling Christians to take risks. I mentioned one of them in Chapter 4, namely, that we might become so fixated on self-denial that we are unable to enjoy the proper pleasures of this life that God has given for our good. Another danger, which is worse, is that we might be drawn to a life of risk for self-exalting reasons. We might feel the adrenaline of heroism rising. We might scorn the lazy and cowardly and feel superior. We might think of risk as a kind of righteousness that makes us acceptable to God. What would be missing from all these mistakes is childlike faith in the sovereign rule of God in the world and in his triumphant love. 

I have been assuming that the power and the motive behind taking risks for the cause of God is not heroism, or the lust for adventure, or the courage of self-reliance, or the need to earn God’s good will, but rather faith in the all-providing, all-ruling, all-satisfying Son of God, Jesus Christ. The strength to risk losing face for the sake of Christ is the faith that God’s love will lift up your face in the end and vindicate your cause. The strength to risk losing money for the cause of the Gospel is the faith that we have a treasure in the heavens that cannot fail. The strength to risk losing life in this world is faith in the promise that he who loses his life in this world will save it for the age to come.

  - pp.89-90 from Don't Waste Your Life by John Piper (emphasis mine)

What do I want for this life on earth?

All you want is to be light.

Maybe finish school,
get a good job,
find a husband or a wife,
nice house,
nice car,
long weekends,
good vacations,
grow old healthy,
have a fun retirement,
and die easy,
no hell.

And that's all you want.
You don't give a rip whether your life counts on this earth for eternity.

That's a tragedy in the making. That is a tragedy in the making.
 

Mystery of marriage

This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. (Ephesians 5:23 ESV)

This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. (Ephesians 5:23 NIV)

The mystery [of marriage] is this: God did not create the union of Christ and the church after the pattern of human marriage - just the reverse! He created human marriage on the pattern of Christ's relation to the church.  - p213, from Desiring God by John Piper 

I love my wife, but I am not always the godly husband I am called to be. Whether I feel good about myself as a husband or not, how glorious, humbling, and encouraging this mystery is.


O, Lord, be gracious to me, and empower me to love her like Christ does the church.

The gaping hole

In my craving to be happy, I acknowledge that at the center of my life there is a gaping hole of emptiness without God. This hole constitues my need and my rebellion at the same time. I want it filled, but I rebel at God's filling it with Himself. By grace, I awake to the folly of my rebellion and see that if it is filled with God my joy will be full.
- p. 164, Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist by John Piper

The Goodnews is not that you are given a way to salvation by obeying the law. It is not even that you can come to serve God simply by you toiling away. The radical nature of the Goodnews is that God is here to serve you in a way that is glorifying to Him and joyful for you.

Love that is genuine

My wife and I are reading through the Desiring God together. Last week, we concluded the chapter on Love. In it, I've learned that you should seek your joy in loving others. That can be misunderstood very easily, but when understood properly, and pursued and practised carefully, I know my life would honour God by genuinely loving other people.
This short video can help.

(See the original Desiring God entry.)

Oh, grant me this genuine love that seeks good of other people. Let me rejoice in others being saved, blessed, prospering and flourishing. Oh, grant me, Lord, this change of heart.

Worship - emotion required

Worship is a way of gladly reflecting back to God the radiance of His worth. It is not a mere act of willpower by which we perform outward acts. Without the engagement of the heart, we do not really worship. The engagement of the heart in worship is the coming alive of the feelings and emotions and affections of the heart. Where feelings for God are dead, worship is dead.
True worship must include inward feelings that reflect the worth of God's glory. If this were not so, the word hypocrite would have no meaning. But there is such a thing as hypocrisy - going through outward motions (like singing, praying, giving, reciting) that signify affections of the heart that are not there. "This people honours me with their lips, but their heart is far from me."

- John Piper, from Desiring God, p 87-88

Get your copy of Desiring God from Book Depository, Koorong, or Amazon.

Saving faith

Saving faith is the heartfelt conviction not only that Christ is reliable, but also that He is desirable. It is the confidence that He will come through with His promises and that what He promises is more to be desired than all the world.
- Desiring God p.73, John Piper

Prayer with the faith in future grace

Lord, whatever it takes to be free from pride;
Whatever it takes to be free from lust;
Whatever it takes to be free from greed;
From anxiety, from self-reliance;
Whatever it takes to be a loving, humble, kind husband and good father;
Whatever it takes, do it to me.
Cancer?
Financial difficulty?
Church strife?
I won't prescribe, I will just take the pill.
Do you want holiness? Do you want to be loving, humble, free, radical enough to pray
Lord if it take that kind of experience in order to bring me to this kind of self-abandonment, use your own wise, good physician wisdom.

Therefore faith is future oriented and embraces a future governed by God's grace and therefore superior to the future promised by sin.

-- John Piper from Battling Unbelief Session 3 Is it biblical part 1 --

This momentary life

Very soon the shadow will give way to Reality. The partial will pass into the Perfect. The foretaste will lead to the Banquet. The troubled path will end in Paradise. A hundred candle-lit evenings will come to their consummation in the marriage supper of the Lamb. And this momentary marriage will be swallowed up by Life. Christ will be all and in all. And the purpose of marriage will be complete.

-- John Piper, p178, This Momentary Marriage

So will it be! Very soon, Christ will be all and in all, and the parable will cease for the Real will be real.

Maximum Joy Guaranteed

I know many people would not get this message. But if you are one of those few who wonder what Christian faith is about or why I am so excited about Jesus, it is partly because knowing and trusting Him guarantees the absolute maximum joy a human being can ever have.

Do NOT waste your life.


(HT: Rebs Kim)

My 500th blogpost

This is my 500th blogpost here. I started blogging on the 18th July 2007 (not counting my earlier days with xanga or even earlier-er days!). That's almost two years ago. This space has been a place where I can express my rather random thoughts. I often meant good for the readers. But this blog lives on the internet, and the internet has its dangerous pits. Pornography is one of them. Godless and instant sexual gratification without the real intimacy and commitment is only a click away. I am exposed to this danger as much as any other, and I confess that I had indulged in this sin many times before. I can still feel the temptation time to time, so I must rest and rely on God's joy and grace to save me. I have not given up the fight, for God has not given up on me.

Seeing and Savouring Jesus Christ

In my previous post, I reviewed the book, Seeing and Savouring Jesus Christ. In it, I said:

I would even recommend this book to non-Christians since the book in fact has an evangelistic edge to it (it even includes a section at the end specifically aimed at a non-Christian).

However, I realised the one I read was a different edition to what is most commonly available nowadays. My copy looks more like the following:

It's published by IVP, and the newer edition is from Crossway. The newer edition does not have the evangelistic message section at the back, and its closing chapter was in fact the preface in the IVP edition. I may have to think twice about the evangelistic value of the newer edition, and may not use it as an evangelistic tool.

Tiny book review: Seeing and Savouring Jesus Christ

I'm actually doing a small group study using a material with the same title, Seeing and Savouring Jesus Christ. Reading this book was not a difficult task, but I do feel that I have rushed it a little. It might have been better if I read it slower, like reading Knowing God, but I wanted to push through reading the book even though I have not finished with the small group study yet. Perhaps that cost me. I don't think I benefited from this book as much as I hoped. Strangely, the words and sentences in this book came to me without the usual persuasive and convicting force like when I hear John Piper preaching. In the small group study material, a DVD comes with it, and when I hear Piper preaching and teaching in it, I was greatly helped and encouraged. But not this book.
Having said that, I would still recommend this book for new Christians since it handles various aspects and qualities of Jesus that makes Him glorious. I would also recommend it to seasoned Christians for it is good to be reminded of these things about our Lord. I would even recommend this book to non-Christians since the book in fact has an evangelistic edge to it (it even includes a section at the end specifically aimed at a non-Christian).

You can get this book from Koorong or Amazon.

(3 down, 21 to go.)

A Grief Observed: the supremacy of God in grief

Ok, one more quote from the book, A Grief Observed

The notes have been about myself, and about H., and about God. In that order. The order and the proportions exactly what they ought not to have been. And I see that I have nowhere fallen into that mode of thinking about either which we call praising them. Yet that would have been best for me. Praise is the mode of love which always has some element of joy in it. Praise in due order; of Him as the giver, of her as the gift. Don't we in praise somehow enjoy what we praise, however far we are from it? I must do more of this. I have lost the fruition I once had of H. And I am far, far away in the valley of my unlikeness, from the fruition which, if His mercies are infinite, I may some time have of God. But by praising I can still, in some degree, enjoy her, and already, in some degree, enjoy Him. Better than nothing.
- p. 62-63 A Grief Observed by C. S. Lewis

I am hearing the hallmark of Christians, namely, other-centredness. And even more so I smell Piper in this text of Lewis in saying that we enjoy what we praise. Interesting.

Faith or gratitude

I just watched the fourth session of Battling Unbelief. It may be a little hard to understand at the beginning, but it is an absolute gold. Buy it or borrow it. Watch it, learn from it, and repent and trust in God's never-ending grace.

What did I learn?

Simply put, faith and gratitude, both are indispensible in the life of a Christian. However, it is faith, not gratitude that produces good works. (Watch the dvd to understand the full meaning of this sentence!)

I have spoken out of ignorance just a few days ago, that we do good works as Christians because we are thankful to God, in a conversation with a muslim work colleague. Given the context of the whole conversation, that was not a completely wrong answer I believe, but Oh, how I regret that moment, and I wish I had made a better, more accurate, more convincing answer to him.

The most spectacular sin and God's sovereign grace

I haven't been listening to John Piper's sermons for a while, but when I listened to his sermon yesterday, it was very refreshing and greatly encouraging.
I thank God for him and his ministries.
Here's the sermon I listened to yesterday.
I recommend it.

Against abortion: the best explanation I heard so far

(HT: Between Two Worlds)