Quotes from John Piper

1) Singing can help us remember words, which means that we should use melodies that are effective, sing words that God wants us to remember

In other words, in all my rejoicing over all the good things that God has made, God himself is the heart of my joy, the gladness of my joy. In all my rejoicing in everything, there is a central rejoicing in God. Every joy that does not have God as its central gladness is a hollow joy and in the end will burst like a bubble. This is what led Augustine to pray, "He loves thee too little who loves anything together with Thee, which he loves not for thy sake."2

God's reality is displayed to us in His Word or His world and we do not then feel in our heart any grief or longing or hope or fear or awe or joy or gratitude or confidence, then we may dutifully sing and pray and recite and gesture as much as we like, but it will not be real worship.

God's passion to be glorified and our passion to be satisfied are one experience in the Christ-exalting act of worship—singing in the sanctuary and suffering in the streets.

For the mind of faith, a promised act of God is as good as done.

Everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed." Concealed sin keeps us from seeing the light of Christ.

God is justified. God is blameless. If God casts David into hell, God will be innocent. This is radical, God-centered repentance.

Therefore, Christ crucified is the foundation of all honest and everlast- ing joy. No self-deception is necessary to enjoy it. Indeed all deception must cease in order to enjoy it to the full.

Don't dwell on your corruption to the degree that it keeps you from joy, freedom, and love.

So the goal of spiritual leadership is to muster people to join God in living for God's glory.

Relativism, as we saw in the previous chapter, undermines that effort. It kidnaps the happy handmaiden of truth and makes her serve the pride and pleasure of pragmatists. Relativists don't pursue truth. They make the denial of truth serve them.

Salvation is not mainly the forgiveness of sins, but mainly the fellowship of Jesus (1 Corinthians 1:9).

Most evangelicals have bought into the need for apparent indifference when writing about massively important things.

Jesus's solution to our love affair with sin is that we be mastered by joy in a new reality, namely, God.

One of the things pleasing in God's sight is that his people keep on drawing near to him forever and ever. And so he is working in us this very thing.

will think of the Lord in what we are doing at work. We will ask, Why would the Lord like this done? How would the Lord like this done? When would the Lord like this done? Will the Lord help me do this? What effect will this have for the Lord's honor? Being a Christian at work means radically Lord-centered living.

Every aspect of the way God views and saves sinners is designed to undermine racism and lead to a reconciled and redeemed humanity from every people group in the world.

The secret, I said, is knowing that the same sovereignty that could stop the coronavirus, yet doesn't, is the very sovereignty that sustains the soul in it.

What is the chief aim of man? Man's chief aim is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.

The extent of our sacrifice coupled with the depth of our joy displays the worth we put on the reward of God.

the destruction of conceived human life—whether embryonic, fetal, or viable—is an assault on the unique person-forming work of God. And therefore to the degree that we recognize even in fallen person-hood a unique value, because of its potential to glorify God with conscious obedience and praise, to that degree will we shrink back with reverence and fear from assaulting or obstructing the

This is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.

I am immortal till Christ's work for me to do is done.

This is the great ground of joy in the word of the cross: Justification is by grace alone (not mixed with our merit), through faith alone (not mixed with our works), on the basis of Christ alone (not mingling his righteousness with ours), to the glory of God alone (not ours).