Messages by Desiring God

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.

The promise will be fulfilled in spite of all judgment.

The way we seek to have something may be wrong, when the having, itself, may not be wrong.

If the old Joshua was victorious over the enemies of God, then how much more the new Joshua.

Do not grumble; it is God's grace that sends you into the wilderness. He is inoculating you against the infections of wealth.

The law is a description of the obedience of faith; it is not a job description for how to earn the wages of God's blessings.

As I was reading about Joseph's unjust imprisonment the other day, I was struck all of a sudden with the similarity and contrast between Joseph and John the Baptist.

God shows great power on behalf of his people so that others might see and fear.

God's 4,000 year old relation to Abraham is of immense importance for your life as a believer today.

The essence of the Fall and of our depraved hearts is the desire not to depend on God.

Since God created everything, we and all our so-called possessions are his to do with as he pleases.

When you value someone because they value God, you are not denying that God is your only good; you are expressing it.

God designs human support to sustain his children's faith and to lighten the burdens they bear in the service of love.

Only worship is an end in itself. Only worship should not be done as a means to achieving something other than itself.

Labor to feast on Jesus. Satisfy yourself with his beauty and his hope-filled fellowship.

Jesus is God's fullest revelation and the source of all the knowledge and power that is good for us to have.

We are afflicted and blessed with a chronic restlessness, an insatiable soul-thirst, for this reason: that we might keep looking until we find Christ.

Never underestimate the power of truth spoken in a single sentence.

Do not fear the work God calls you to. He loves you deeply, knows you fully, and will turn all for your good.

We must honor God above the state. But if the state does not require us to disobey Jesus then we should be subject for the Lord's sake.

How you do your job is an essential part of Christian discipleship.