Don't want to be rich

What makes you happy

What is tragedy

Three weeks ago we got word at our church that Ruby Eliason and Laura Edwards had both been killed in Cameroon. Ruby was over 80. Single all her life, she poured it out for one great thing: To make Jesus Christ known among the unreached, the poor, and the sick. Laura was a widow, a medical doctor, pushing 80 years old, and serving at Ruby's side in Cameroon. The brakes failed, the car went over the cliff, and they were both killed instantly. And I asked my people: was that a tragedy? Two lives, driven by one great vision, spent in unheralded service to the perishing poor for the glory of Jesus Christ—two decades after almost all their American counterparts have retired to throw their lives away on trifles in Florida or New Mexico. No. That is not a tragedy. That is a glory.

I tell you what a tragedy is. I'll read to you from Reader's Digest (Feb. 2000, p. 98) what a tragedy is: "Bob and Penny... took early retirement from their jobs in the Northeast five years ago when he was 59 and she was 51. Now they live in Punta Gorda, Florida, where they cruise on their 30 foot trawler, play softball and collect shells." The American Dream: come to the end of your life - your one and only life - and let the last great work before you give an account to your Creator, be "I collected shells. See my shells." THAT is a tragedy. And people today are spending billions of dollars to persuade you to embrace that tragic dream. And I get forty minutes to plead with you: don't buy it.

Don't waste your life. It is so short and so precious. I grew up in a home where my father spent himself as an evangelist to bring the gospel of Jesus Christ to the lost. He had one consuming vision: Preach the gospel. There was a plaque in our kitchen for all my growing up years. Now it hangs in our living room. I have looked at it almost daily for about 48 years. It says, "Only one life, twill soon be past. Only what's done for Christ will last."

Demonic power and indwelling sin

A Challenge to women

1. That all of your life—in whatever calling—be devoted to the glory of God.
2. That the promises of Christ be trusted so fully that peace and joy and strength fill your soul to overflowing.
3. That this fullness of God overflow in daily acts of love so that people might see your good deeds and give glory to your Father in heaven.
4. That you be women of the Book, who love and study and obey the Bible in every area of its teaching. That meditation on Biblical truth be the source of hope and faith. And that you continue to grow in understanding through all the chapters of your life, never thinking that study and growth are only for others.
5. That you be women of prayer, so that the Word of God would open to you; and the power of faith and holiness would descend upon you; and your spiritual influence would increase at home and at church and in the world.
6. That you be women who have a deep grasp of the sovereign grace of God undergirding all these spiritual processes, that you be deep thinkers about the doctrines of grace, and even deeper lovers and believers of these things.
7. That you be totally committed to ministry, whatever your specific role, that you not fritter your time away on soaps or ladies magazines or aimless hobbies, any more than men should fritter theirs away on excessive sports or aimless diddling in the garage. That you redeem the time for Christ and his Kingdom.
8. That, if you are single, you exploit your singleness to the full in devotion to Christ and not be paralyzed by the desire to be married.
9. That, if you are married, you creatively and intelligently and sincerely support the leadership of your husband as deeply as obedience to Christ will allow; that you encourage him in his God-appointed role as head; that you influence him spiritually primarily through your fearless tranquility and holiness and prayer.
10. That, if you have children, you accept responsibility with your husband (or alone if necessary) to raise up children who hope in the triumph of God, sharing with him the teaching and discipline of the children, and giving to the children that special nurturing touch and care that you are uniquely fitted to give.
11. That you not assume that secular employment is a greater challenge or a better use of your life than the countless opportunities of service and witness in the home the neighborhood, the community, the church, and the world. That you not only pose the question: Career vs. full time mom? But that you ask as seriously: Full time career vs. freedom for ministry? That you ask: Which would be greater for the Kingdom— to be in the employ of someone telling you what to do to make his business prosper, or to be God's free agent dreaming your own dream about how your time and your home and your creativity could make God's business prosper? And that in all this you make your choices not on the basis of secular trends or yuppie lifestyle expectations, but on the basis of what will strengthen the family and advance the cause of Christ.
12. That you step back and (with your husband, if you are married) plan the various forms of your life's ministry in chapters. Chapters are divided by various things—age, strength, singleness, marriage, employment choices, children at home, children in college, grandchildren, retirement, etc. No chapter has all the joys. Finite life is a series of tradeoffs. Finding God's will, and living for the glory of Christ to the full in every chapter is what makes it a success, not whether it reads like somebody else's chapter or whether it has in it what chapter five will have.
13. That you develop a wartime mentality and lifestyle; that you never forget that life is short, that billions of people hang in the balance of heaven and hell every day, that the love of money is spiritual suicide, that the goals of upward mobility (nicer clothes, cars, houses, vacations, food, hobbies) are a poor and dangerous substitute for the goals of living for Christ with all your might, and maximizing your joy in ministry to people's needs.
14. That in all your relationships with men you seek the guidance of the Holy Spirit in applying the Biblical vision of manhood and womanhood; that you develop a style and demeanor that does justice to the unique role God has given to man to feel responsible for gracious leadership in relation to women—a leadership which involves elements of protection and care and initiative. That you think creatively and with cultural sensitivity (just as he must do) in shaping the style and setting the tone of your interaction with men.
15. That you see Biblical guidelines for what is appropriate and inappropriate for men and women in relation to each other not as arbitrary constraints on freedom but as wise and gracious prescriptions for how to discover the true freedom of God's ideal of complementarity. That you not measure your potential by the few roles withheld but by the countless roles offered. That you turn off the TV and Radio and think about...

The awesome significance of motherhood

Complementing a man's life as his wife

Ministries to the handicapped

• hearing impaired
• blind
• lame
• retarded

Ministries to the sick:

• nursing
• physician
• hospice care—cancer, AIDS, etc.
• community health

Ministries to the socially estranged:

• emotionally impaired
• recovering alcoholics
• recovering drug users
• escaping prostitutes
• abused children, women
• runaways, problem children
• orphans

Prison ministries:

• women's prisons!
• families of prisoners
• rehabilitation to society

Ministries to youth:

• teaching
• sponsoring
• open houses and recreation
• outings and trips
• counseling
• academic assistance

Sports ministries:

• neighborhood teams
• church teams

Therapeutic counseling:

• independent
• church based
• institutional

Audio visual ministries:

• composition
• design
• production
• distribution

Writing ministries:

• free lance
• curriculum development
• fiction
• non-fiction
• editing
• institutional communications
• journalistic skills for publications

Teaching ministries:

• Sunday school: children, youth, students, women
• grade school
• high school
• college

Music ministries:

• composition
• training
• performance
• voice
• choir
• instrumentalist

Evangelistic ministries:

• personal witnessing
• Inter Varsity
• Campus Crusade
• Navigators
• Home Bible Studies
• outreach to children
• Visitation teams
• Counseling at meetings
• Billy Graham phone bank

Radio and TV ministries:

• technical assistance
• writing
• announcing
• producing

Theater and drama ministries:

• acting
• directing
• writing
• scheduling

Social ministries:

• literacy
• pro-life
• pro-decency
• housing
• safety
• beautification

Pastoral care assistance:

• visitation
• newcomer welcoming and assistance
• hospitality
• food and clothing and transportation

Prayer ministries:

• praying!!!
• mobilizing for major Concerts of Prayer
• helping with small groups of prayer
• coordinating prayer chains
• promoting prayer days and weeks and vigils

Missions:

• all of the above across cultures

Support ministries:

• countless jobs that undergird major ministries

http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/Articles/ByDate/1995/1746_A_Challenge_to_Women/

Simplicity Is Possible and Good

From desiringgod.og

I Timohy 6:8: "If we have food and clothing, with these we shall be content." Christians can be and ought to be content with the simple necessities of life. I'll mention three reasons why simplicity is possible and good. First, because when you have God near you and for you, you don't need extra money or extra things to give you peace and security. Hebrews 13:5, 6 says,

Keep your life free from the love of money. Be content with what you have. For he has said, "I will never fail you nor forsake you." Hence we can confidently say, "The Lord is my helper, I will not be afraid; what can man do to me?"

No matter which way the market is moving, God is always better than gold. Therefore, by God's help we can be content with the simple necessities of life.

Second, we can be content with the necessities of life because the deepest, most satisfying delights God gives us through creation are free gifts from nature and loving relationships with people. After your basic needs are met, money begins to diminish your capacity for these pleasures rather than increase them. Buying things contributes absolutely nothing to the heart's capacity for joy. There is a deep difference between the temporary thrill of a new toy and a homecoming hug from a devoted friend. Who do you think has the deepest most satisfying joy in life, the man who pays $100 for a fortieth floor suite downtown and spends his evening in the half-lit, smoke filled lounge impressing strange women with ten dollar cocktails, or the man who chooses the Motel 6 by a vacant lot of sunflowers and spends his evening watching the sunset and writing a love letter to his wife?

Third, we should be content with the simple necessities of life because we could invest the extra that we make for what really counts. Three billion people today are outside Jesus Christ. Two-thirds of those do not have a viable Christian witness in their culture. If they are to hear—and Christ commands that they hear—cross-cultural missionaries will have to be sent and paid for. All the wealth needed to send this new army of good news ambassadors is in the American church. If we, like Paul, are content with the simple necessities of life, thousands of dollars at Bethlehem and millions of dollars in the Baptist General Conference and hundreds of millions of dollars in the Protestant church would be released to take the gospel to the frontiers. And the revolution of joy and freedom it would cause at home would be the best local witness imaginable. The biblical call is that you can and ought to be content with the simple necessities of life. Therefore, don't try to get rich.

Don't Waste Your Life - John Piper

Jesus and Prosperity Gospel

Missions and Masturbation

Masturbation is the experience of sexual orgasm produced by self-stimulation. Virtually every man and almost as many women have tried it. It is a regular practice of most single men.

One of the major forces preventing young people from obeying the call of God into vocational Christian service is defeat in the area of lust. A teenager hears a challenging call to throw himself into the cause of world evangelization. He feels the promptings of the Holy Spirit. He tastes the thrill of following the King of kings into battle. But he does not obey because he is masturbating regularly. He feels guilty. He can hardly imagine witnessing to a pretty girl about the eternal plight of her soul, because he has so habitually looked at girls naked in his imagination. So he feels unworthy and unable to obey the call of God. Masturbation becomes the enemy of missions.

Is masturbation wrong? Let me address the issue mainly for men. I cannot imagine sexual orgasm in the loins without sexual image in the mind. I know there are nocturnal emissions, which I regard as innocent and helpful, but I doubt that they are ever orgasmic apart from a sexual dream that supplies the necessary image in the mind. Evidently God has constituted the connection between sexual orgasm and sexual thought in such a way that the force and pleasure of orgasm is dependent on the thought or images in our minds.

Therefore in order to masturbate, it is necessary to get vivid and exciting thoughts or images into the mind. This can be done by pure imagination or by pictures or movies or stories or real persons. These images always involve women as sexual objects. I use the word “object” because in order for a women to be a true sexual “subject” in our imagination she must in reality be one with whom we are experiencing what we are imagining. This is not the case with masturbation.

So I vote no on masturbation. There may be other reasons why it is wrong. For now I rest my vote on the inevitable sexual images which accompany masturbation and which turn women into sexual objects. The sexual thoughts that enable masturbation do not help any man to treat women with greater respect. Therefore masturbation produces real and legitimate guilt and stands in the way of obedience.

Three encouragements to single men:

1. You are not alone in the battle.
2. Periodic failure in this area no more disqualifies you from ministry than periodic failures of impatience (which is also a sin).
3. Pursue the expulsive power of a new affection. I walked by a whole section of “photography” books at the Walker Art Center last Thursday empowered by the better pleasure of feeling Christ conquer the temptation to look.

For the sake of your power,

Pastor John

Atheism: Laughable and blasphemous

I've just watched Richard Dawkins on SMH today. He did the talk at Opera House.

It reminds me to post this John Piper's video regarding atheist last week.

Restore to me the joy of your salvation

Psalms 51:12- Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit.

People give way to sexual sin because they don’t have the fullness of joy and gladness in Christ.

Because when that joy fades I click on pornography.
When that joy fades I start cruising the neighborhood.
When that joy fades I get an itch for another woman. When that joy fades,
on and on and on...

Every sin on the outside is symptomatic of the absence of this joy.

J.Piper

Prayer for everyday Christian warfare: Oh God, teach me to taste and embrace the joy and gladness in You.

We must be born again

You Must Suffer - John Piper

Not Vacation

I thank God, as He always lead me to a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy through Jesus Christ by listening, reading, doing Word of God, especially God uses John Piper's ministry to help me understanding and tasting the love of Christ. Thank you Pastor John, I pray, may God gives you wisdom on your annual writing leave. I can see now how Pastor John really serious about writing book, his dedication to the ministry has replaced 'a holiday' to a time where he can focus on his books - to spread the Gospel. Here's what I read on DesiringGod blog post.

My 2010 Writing Leave: What? and Why?
From February 4 through March 17, I will be on my annual writing leave (with a couple speaking trips thrown in). Thank you for supporting me in these focused times away. They are not vacation. I usually work longer hours during writing leave than during regular ministry seasons.

So please pray for me that I would love my family well and that I would be very productive for the glory of Christ. Pray that I would devote more time to prayer, not less; that I would give more time to read and meditate on the Scriptures, not less; and pray that I would see beautiful truth in God’s word and be able to write about it in spiritually compelling ways. What will I work on?

First of all, Think: The Life of the Mind and the Love of God, which I wrote last year, is scheduled for publication in September and needs final editing. That will take some days.

Second, Bloodlines: Race, Cross, and the Christians, which I also wrote last year, needs significant revision and will demand more work than Think to put it in a final form.

Third, Don Carson and I hope to turn our two talks on The Pastor as Theologian, and The Theologian as Pastor into one book. I need to expand my talk so that it’s worthy of being called half of a (small) book. We hope this will be useful and encouraging to many pastors.

The short piece I wrote the day before my surgery back in 2006, Don’t Waste Your Cancer, has proved surprisingly useful around the world. Crossway wants to put it in a small booklet. There are a few things that might make it better for that purpose.

Finally, after two books on the life-and-death doctrine of Justification (Counted Righteous in Christ and The Future of Justification), I have one more in mind. I will not finish it this year, but I would like to make a start. This Fall I am to lecture on justification at the annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society and serve on a panel with N.T. Wright. So I hope to combine forethought on that lecture with a start on the book.
There are numerous other projects I hope to live long enough to finish. But we will take it one year at a time.

Why do I pursue writing in this way? There are other very important things to do. Here are the reasons that I am aware of, moving from general to specific.

I exist to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples through Jesus Christ. Writing is one way of spreading this passion. God says I exist for his glory (Isaiah 43:7). Therefore, I write to make him look great.

I write to serve the church. Speaking the truth about important things is a good thing for the health of the church. You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free (John 8:32). Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth (John 17:17). I pray that the church will be helped by what I write.

I learn most when I am writing. So since God commands me to grow in the knowledge and the grace of the Lord (2 Peter 3:18), it seems like a good method for me.

I find a good deal of pleasure in the craft of writing. Some people delight to paint. Others to sculpt. Others to remodel old furniture. Others to crochet and cross-stitch. I delight to make words effective in awakening passion for the sake of Christ-exalting truth.

I have been profoundly changed by reading books. So I know that God uses books to change people for his glory. I would like to see others experience some of the things I have experienced in seeing God through the eyes of others.

Finally, there is an inner impulse that I cannot explain that drives me to write. I would write if there were no possibility of publication. I have hundreds of pages that no one has ever seen but me, and it would not matter ultimately if they were destroyed. I wrote them not to be published but because there is an impulse from within.
Thank you for praying for me in these weeks.

Pastor John

The reason we sinned

The reason we sinned, because we have other treasures beside Jesus, Therefore everyday is the battle to believe the Gospel, to believe, to receive, to be satisfied by Jesus as our everything. J. Piper

We need a Savior not just because we have sinned, but because we have sinned by nature. We are by nature sinners. J. Piper

What makes Jesus look beautiful

I’ll tell you what makes Jesus look beautiful. It’s when you smash your car and your little girl goes flying through the windshield and lands, like I was with a little girl on 11th Ave two weeks ago; dead on the street for three hours before the police could let her go.


And you say, through the deepest possible pain…


“God is enough, God is enough.”


“He is good. He will take care of us. He will satisfy us. He will get us through this. He is our treasure”


“Whom have I in heaven but you? And on Earth there is nothing that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart and my little girl may fail, but you are the strength of my heart and my portion forever.”


J.Piper

Job - John Piper

The critical question for our generation‏

"The critical question for our generation—and for every generation—
is this:

If you could have heaven, with no sickness, and with all the
friends you ever had on earth, and all the food you ever liked, and
all the leisure activities you ever enjoyed, and all the natural beauties
you ever saw, all the physical pleasures you ever tasted, and no
human conflict or any natural disasters, could you be satisfied with
heaven, if Christ were not there? " ~ J.piper

Do you feel loved by God?

"Do you feel loved by God because you believe he makes much of you, or because you believe he frees you and empowers you to enjoy making much of him?" - J. Piper

Covetousness (Keserakahan)

Covetousness is desiring something so much that you lose your contentment in God.

The opposite of covetousness is contentment in God. When contentment in God decreases, covetousness for gain increases. That's why Paul says in Colossians 3:5 that covetousness is idolatry. "Put to death what is earthly in you: immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness which is idolatry." It's idolatry because the contentment that the heart should be getting from God it starts to get from something else.

So covetousness is desiring something so much that you lose your contentment in God. Or: losing your contentment in God so that you start to seek it elsewhere.

Have you ever considered that the Ten Commandments begin and end with virtually the same commandment? "You shall have no other gods before me" (Exodus 20:3) and "You shall not covet" (Exodus 20:17) are almost equivalent commands. Coveting is desiring anything other than God in a way that betrays a loss of contentment and satisfaction in him. Covetousness is a heart divided between two gods. So Paul calls it idolatry.

~ excerpt from John Piper 1988