Desiring God Messages by John Piper Audio

When you finally hear and believe the drumbeat of the gospel, the rhythm of your step changes. There is a life in step with the gospel, and there is a life out of step with the gospel.

Very few people today stand up and praise the unity and coherence of truth.

To try to explain the change from Paul's pre-conversion persecution to his post-conversion passion for the gospel merely by the work of men is to grasp at a straw.

There is one, and only one, gospel. It is therefore astonishing — and tragic — to turn away from it and lose both God and his grace.

The freest people in the world are those who submit most fully to the authority of Christ in Scripture.

Jesus makes it clear that eternal life hangs on whether we are ready when he comes.

The essence of lukewarmness is the statement, "I need nothing." The lukewarm are spiritually self-satisfied.

The point of Hosea is that God exalts his mercy by not giving up on his promiscuous wife.

Christ came at Christmas to build a bridge across the chasm of sin to eternal life, but the name of the bridge is purity. Christmas is for purity.

God uses little towns, youngest sons, and slingshots to magnify his self-sufficient and most magnificent glory.

The fountain of forgiveness has been opened for you. And if you cleanse yourself through faith in that fountain, all the subsequent promises to God's people are yours.

Nothing you do is a trifle if you do it in the name of God. He will shake heaven and earth to fill your labor with splendor.

The belly of a fish hardly seems like salvation. But it was.

The violent nation will not boast forever. Very soon the recompense will come, and after that all the nations will render an account to God.

Am I ready to take my stand in the divine courtroom and hear the Judge pass an eternal sentence on me? We cannot face this unless we have faith.

Conversion isn't just changing your mind but exchanging the love of comfort for the love of goodness and justice.

Every staff on which we try to lean in our pride will snap and pierce us through. One refuge will be secure: God.

God will fight against us and clog the joy of our lives until we return with our whole heart to him. For his purpose is to be God alone in the midst of his people.

Every Christian has received a gift from God which he is responsible to use for the good of the church and for the glory of God.

God aims to be an utterly unique, wonderful, and exalted God, by condescending to forgive sinners and work for those who wait for him.

There is no necessary connection between age and wisdom, or youth and folly. Wisdom comes from the Lord and is offered to all ages.

The good news of the Bible is not that we are not worms, but that God helps worms who trust him.

We can know God's will and maintain trust in his help, if we are familiar with the trajectories of his Word.

How different, how wonderful the use of our mouths would be if we lived by faith in the God who made the mouth and not by sight—by looking at our own clumsy tongue.

Silence about Christ is dogma. Not to teach the infinite value of Christ is to teach that he is negligible.

The best fertilizer for our hope and godliness is the knowledge of our future in God's grace.

A life lived for the world will go naked into judgment; a life lived for Christ will be laden with eternal riches.

Confident expectation of a new world of righteousness empowers us to live for peace and purity in the present.

The more you know of Christ and his way, the more severe your judgment will be for not trusting and obeying him.

Even though the rebellious and the licentious today may think they are safe, they should learn that "from of old their condemnation has not been idle, and their destruction is not sleeping."

The meaning of Scripture does not change with every new reader or every new reading. It cannot be twisted to mean whatever we like. It is what it is, unchanging and unending.

The difference between mythical speculations and Christian faith is history. Our doctrines are not the result of clever head-work. They are the result of historical observation.

If the knowledge of God's glorious promises does not spur us on to strive against the tide, then we will be barren and fruitless and drift to our destruction.

If you want to enjoy God's peace and be the aroma of his grace in the world, your knowledge of him has to grow.

John Piper describes the development of baptism in the New Testament and its significance as the new covenant sign for the church.

Faith never says, "The righteousness that leads to life is inaccessible." But faith recognizes its own helplessness and gladly accepts this righteousness as a gift from God.

Jesus was not accidentally entangled in a web of injustice. The saving benefits of his death for sinners were not an afterthought. Jesus saw that the time had come and set his face to fulfill his mission: to die in Jerusalem for our sake.

We crave to be moved by some rare glimpse of greatness. We yearn for a vision of glory.

Trusting Christ as Savior, surrendering to him as Lord, and orienting all of your family relations on him, transforms the home into a little heaven on earth.

We don't have a deep sense of peace and fulfillment when we have successfully deluded everybody about who we really are or what we really feel or think. There is a deep (and I believe God-given) longing to be authentic, not to be hypocrites.

There is no true freedom where happiness depends on denying the inevitable; there is only slavery disguised in a thousand forms of fun and busyness.

Turn away from all the intellectual, physical, and religious tactics the world uses to evade its guilt, and rest in Jesus.

If you ever meet a man who cares nothing for the praise and approval of men (Mark 12:14), but whose one controlling desire is to glorify God whom he loves with all his heart, believe that man. He is true.

If the church has no compelling reasons for believing the biblical portrait of Jesus, then we are acting like well-trained animals who can be turned this way and that by arbitrary incentives.

The question that Jesus drives us to ask again and again is not, "How much should I give?" but rather, "How much dare I keep?"

Legalism is a more dangerous disease than alcoholism because it doesn't look like one.

Your power to give a compassionate witness about Jesus is in direct proportion to how precious Jesus is to you.

Before God enables his people to bring in a harvest, he pours out a Spirit of prayer upon them. The surest sign that God is about to send power upon us is a great movement of prayer in our midst.

You can't cleave to Christ with white-hot devotion if you don't remember and feel what your plight would be without him.

Christmas marks the arrival of the end of history, which will soon be consummated by Christ's second appearing.