Desiring God Messages by John Piper Audio

Some of the gospel’s most precious benefits are rooted in the superiority of Christ’s priesthood. The baby born in Bethlehem lives forever and saves to the uttermost.

In a world of many authorities, we magnify the supreme lordship of Christ by the way we submit to the fading structures of this age.

The circumstances for world missions may seem forbidding. But if we wait for the optimal time to become or send a missionary, then we won’t.

“Hold fast the word, unchanged and true; let insight, joy, and song be new.” John Piper offers a charge to Brian Tabb, the third president of Bethlehem College and Seminary.

Paul’s Christian life was one of countless dangers, continual sorrows, and constant joy. How is that kind of life possible?

By God’s design, truth serves emotion. Thinking serves feeling. The lyrics of our best songs serve the Godward longings of our hearts.

Faithful parents and teachers speak to kids on their level, but they also aim to create new concepts, new structures of thought, new ways of viewing reality.

Reformed theology is beautiful because the God of sovereign grace is beautiful. The doctrines are windows — he is the glory.

Apart from union with Christ, we would have no access to God’s promises and no reason to rejoice in affliction. But in Christ, every promise of God is Yes.

How can Christians be freed from selfishness so that, at any cost to ourselves, we love others in a way that makes Christ look great? Answer: joy.

The apostle Paul was no stranger to ministry’s many strains. Yet for all his afflictions, he neither lost heart nor tampered with the truth. How?

No one can be neutral about Jesus Christ. Either he will have our heart and soul, our life and obedience — or hell will.

When God makes a promise, he keeps it. And he keeps it through his purposeful, all-wise, absolute sovereignty — through his providence.

God’s will is not simply that we obey God’s will, but that we obey it in a certain way: with all of our might for all of our life.

You don’t have to be Christian to love the story of the Good Samaritan. But applauding Luke’s parable apart from his Gospel contradicts his purpose.

When the Bible speaks of “truth,” it refers ultimately to God himself. Therefore, truth demands more than just our minds — truth will have our whole hearts, now and forever.

God never tests his saints with ill intent. As the Father of lights, his every test aims at the full and lasting happiness of his children.

Why do God’s people wake up as believers day after day until they die? Because the same word that made us goes on keeping us to the end.

Does church leadership seem endlessly complicated? Take heart. Christian leaders guide God’s people from where they are to where God wants them to go, using God’s methods.

God is sovereign, and he has purposed his gospel to spread to the ends of the earth. Those who give themselves to that purpose are invincible, even through suffering.

God will have worshipers from every nation on earth. He will win them, and do so through us. We have only to tell them.

When Christ calls us to the mission field with him, he calls us to deny shallow pleasures, die to ourselves, and enjoy greater and greater delight in him.

Matthew’s Christmas story shows two ways to deal with Jesus: try to get rid of him like Herod, or fall down and worship him like the wise men.

The birth of John the Baptist was great, but the birth of Jesus Christ was infinitely greater. John prepared for salvation, but Jesus purchased it.

Are biblical warnings about false prophets still relevant? Yes, the threat looms as large today as in the first century.

When Jesus asks the Pharisees how David calls the Messiah “Lord,” they refuse to answer. What made that seemingly simple question so incendiary?

God is. No reality is more mind-boggling, more valuable, more life-altering, more electrifying than the absolute being of God.

What is sovereign, sustaining grace? It is not grace that spares us pain, but grace that orders our pain — and then sustains us through the pain.

Romans 8:32 is perhaps the greatest verse in the Bible. No other text quite describes how far God has gone for our salvation and will go for our joy.

God’s word speaks to the mysteries of suffering. We will only bear pain well as we begin to see it like he does.

Christ’s blood bought more than our pardon, precious as it is. His death also purchased the power we need to live a radical Christian life.

What excites a Christian most? Our deepest, truest joy does not flow from completed degrees or flourishing ministries, but from the God who saved us.

What makes a college distinctly Christian? Education is not an end in itself, but a means to knowing and loving Christ.

When a Christian goes home to be with the Lord, we who remain have the chance to rehearse God’s loving design in every believer’s death.

As we age, fears can multiply like wrinkles. But for every concern, we have a blood-bought promise far, far older than our fears.

While on earth, Jesus spoke with unmatched power. Demons obeyed him, and fevers fled at his word. Everything was subject to him — then and now.

When our hearts run dry, and our good works languish, the Bible bids us: “Consider the end.”

When we pray for God to preserve us, we ask that he would be not only our Lord, but our life — not only our God, but our highest and everlasting good.

At the root of all conflict is man’s conflict with God. At Christmas, we celebrate that God took the initiative to establish true peace.

What is the actual experience of receiving Christ? What happens in the soul? Saving faith sees the Son not only as useful, but precious.

When it comes to missions, reasons abound to stay rather than to go. But for every apparent obstacle, countless promises say, “It will be worth it.”

What do we call an obsessively self-centered person? An egomaniac. Then what should we call God, who demands all our praise? We call him gracious.

Hope produces joy and peace, and as we patiently endure tribulation by the power of the Holy Spirit, hope feeds on its own fruit and abounds all the more.

The Puritans took joy seriously because they read the Bible carefully. They saw that delight in God is at the heart of all true obedience.

You will not be perfect in this life, but you can be pleasing to God. You can become a real ingredient in the divine happiness.

Before he created the earth, God knew pain would plague this world. And not only knew, but planned. And not only planned — but purposed.

The individual soul’s affection for God is essential to the corporate, eternal reality of the worshiping church.

When glad in God, we bend low in love for others. We imitate Christ, who not only bowed the knee but hung his body on the tree.

God promises us his life-sustaining presence, even as he leads us into waterless regions of suffering and loss.

Faith does not shipwreck upon the rocks of history, logic, science, or ethics, but on the mountains of sinful desire.