Showing results by author "John Piper" in All Categories

John Piper's bestselling book on missions (more than 300,000 copies sold) draws on key biblical texts to demonstrate that worship is the ultimate goal of the church and that proper worship fuels missionary outreach. Piper offers a biblical defense of God's supremacy in all things, providing listeners with a sound theological foundation for missions.

In the sixth volume of the Swans Are Not Silent series, John Piper celebrates the importance of poetic effort by looking at three influential Christians whose words magnificently display a commitment to truth and a love of beauty. Examining the lives of George Herbert, George Whitefield, and C. S. Lewis, Piper helps us appreciate the importance of carefully crafted words by exploring how Christians can use them to testify to God's glory, wonder at his grace, and rejoice in his salvation.

This book is a passionate call for this generation to make their lives count for eternity. John Piper acknowledges that the risks for those who seek to accomplish something in life - risks in relationships for the sake of righteousness and authenticity, risks with money for the cause of the Gospel, and risks in witnessing to the truth and beauty of Christ. Readers will find their passion for the cross of Christ enlarged as a result of reading this book.

What happens in the heart when it experiences real saving faith? John Piper argues that faith in Christ is not saving unless it includes an “affectional dimension of treasuring Christ.” Nor is God glorified as he ought to be unless he is treasured in being trusted. Saving faith in Jesus Christ welcomes him forever as our supreme and inexhaustible pleasure. What Is Saving Faith? explains that a Savior who is treasured for his all-satisfying worth is more glorified than a Savior who is only trusted for his all-forgiving competence.

Can a Christian-killer really endure 195 lashes from a heart of love? Can a mystic who thinks he was caught up into heaven be a model of lucid rationality? Can an ethnocentric Jew write the most beautiful call to reconciliation? Can a person who lives with the unceasing anguish of empathy be always rejoicing? Can a man's description of the horrors of human sin be exceeded by his delight in human splendor? Can a man with a backbone of steel be as tender as a nursing mother?

The whole Bible teaches truth and awakens emotions, but the Psalms are in a category of their own. They do not just awaken the heart; they put it in the foreground. They do not merely invite our emotions to respond to God's truth; they put our emotions on display. The Psalms are more than commanding-they are contagious. We are not just listening to profound ideas and feelings. We are living among them in their overflow.

Piper has gathered many of Jesus' demands from the four Gospels and puts the demands in a redemptive, historical context, then concisely examines each. The result is an accessible introduction for thoughtful inquirers and new believers, as well as meditative meat for veteran believers who want to know Jesus better.

John Piper explores Scripture’s command to love the second coming of Christ, and what it is about this event that makes it so desirable. While encouraging Christians to have a genuine longing for Jesus’s presence, Piper addresses pressing questions about the end times.

Join a veteran author, pastor, and Christian leader as he captures the 10 astonishing, compassionate, life-giving, joy-awakening, hope-sustaining truths that have held everything together for him.

Drawing explicitly from the Bible, pastor John Piper argues that God’s choice to elect some and not others is completely compatible with his genuine desire that all people would be saved. With humility and grace, Piper addresses common Arminian pillar texts, showing how they do not contradict God’s absolute sovereignty in salvation. Aiming to encourage passionate worship and energetic mission - not intellectual pride - this short book serves as a helpful introduction to this often debated issue.

In this revised and expanded edition of Brothers, We Are Not Professionals that includes a new introduction and select all-new chapters, best-selling author John Piper pleads through a series of thoughtful essays with fellow pastors to abandon the professionalization of the pastorate and pursue the prophetic call of the Bible for radical ministry.

Jesus' words in John 12 are sobering: unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it will bear little fruit. The history of Christianity's expansion proves that God's strategy for reaching unreached peoples with the gospel includes the sufferings of his frontline heralds - the missionaries who willingly die a thousand daily deaths to advance God's kingdom. For William Tyndale, Adoniram Judson, and John Paton, the price they paid to translate the Word of God, to pave the way for missionary mobilization around the world, and to lead the hostile to Christ was great.

Grace is the heart of God to do you good when you deserve it least. But do we really know how deeply we don't deserve it? Only God can reveal that to us. He does it through the bible. And when he does, the wonders of his grace explode with brightness as never before. These Five Points are about how Christians come into being, and how we are kept forever. It reaches back into times past when we were freely chosen. It reaches forward into the future when we will be safe and happy forever.

The subtitle of this work, "Defeating Sin with Superior Pleasure", says it all. There is godly pleasure in applying the faith that first saved us in everyday circumstances, defeating the unbelief and lies that Satan throws at us. Fighting those lies, and the resultant anxiety, pride, impatience, and other sinful attitudes that trip us up, with what Piper calls "the purifying power of God's truth", blesses us with peace as we see God enabling us to live by faith in his promises and his grace.

John Piper sounds a crucial warning in this audiobook, reminding all Christians to exercise great caution regarding "fresh" interpretations of the Bible and to hold fast to the biblical view of justification.

How are we as Christians called to respond when cancer invades our lives, whether our own bodies or those of our friends and family? On the eve of his own cancer surgery, John Piper writes about cancer as an opportunity to glorify God. With pastoral sensitivity, compassion, and strength, Piper gently but firmly acknowledges that we can indeed waste our cancer when we don’t see how it is God’s good plan for us and a hope-filled path for making much of Jesus.

Why is the church so ineffectual and characterized by the mosaic generation as unchristian? The term born again has been devalued both in society and in the church. Recent social studies surveys have shown that those who regard themselves as born again Christians have the same tendency to divorce as people who aren't Christians at all! In these surveys, being born again is defined by what people say they believe.

The sovereignty of God, the sexual nature of humanity, and the gospel of God's mercy for the undeserving-these massive realities never change. And since God is still sovereign, and we are male or female, and Jesus is alive and powerful, A Sweet & Bitter Providence bears a message for listeners from all walks of life. But be warned, Piper tells his audience: This ancient love affair between Boaz and Ruth could be dangerous, inspiring all of us to great risks in the cause of love.

We admire these men for their greatness, but the truth is Augustine grappled with sexual passions, Martin Luther struggled to control his tongue, and John Calvin fought the battle of faith with worldly weapons. Yet each of these men will always be remembered for the messages they declared - messages that still resound today. John Piper explores these men's lives, integrating Augustine's delight in God with Luther's emphasis on the Word and Calvin's exposition of scripture. Through their strengths and struggles, we can learn how to live better today.

When Augustine handed over the leadership of his church in AD 426, his successor was so overwhelmed by a sense of inadequacy that he declared, “The swan is silent”, fearing the spiritual giant’s voice would be lost in time. But for 1,600 years Augustine has not been silent - and neither have the men who faithfully trumpeted the cause of Christ after him. Their lives have inspired every generation of believers and should compel us to a greater passion for God.