All these quotes are from John Piper:
"You don't judge a soul by what it will to do with lukewarm interest, or with mere teeth-gritting determination. To know a soul's proportions you need to know its passions. The true dimensions of a soul are seen in its delights."
"In reality our pain and losses are always to test how much we treasure the all wise, all governing God in comparison to what we have lost."
"People are starving for the greatness of God. But most of them would not give this diagnosis of their troubled lives. The majesty of God is an unknown cure. There are far more popular prescriptions on the market, but the benefit of any other remedy is brief and shallow."
"Do you feel loved by God because he makes much of you, or because he frees you and empowers you to make much of him?"
"Man-centered humans are amazed that God should withhold life and joy from his creatures. But the God-centered Bible is amazed that God should withhold judgment from sinners."
"We were created for something infinitely nobler and greater and deeper than self-contemplation. We were created for the contemplation and enjoyment of God! Anything less than this would be idolatry toward him and disappointment for us. God is the most glorious of all beings. Not to love him and delight in him is a great loss to us and insults him."
"People lift their hand to rebel against the Most High only to find that their rebellion is unwitting service in the wonderful designs of God. Even sin cannot frustrate the purposes of the Almighty. He himself does not commit sin, but he has decreed that there will be acts which are sin - for the acts of Pilate and Herod were predestined by God's plan."
"Strong affections for God, rooted in and shaped by the truth of Scripture - this is the bone and marrow of biblical worship. Therefore Christian Hedonism is passionately opposed to all attempts to drive a wedge between deep thought and deep feeling. It rejects the common notion that profound reflection dries up fervent affection. It resists the assumption that intense emotion thrives only in the absence of coherent doctrine."
"It horribly skews the meaning of the cross when contemporary prophets of self esteem say that the cross is a witness to my infinite worth, since God was willing to pay such a high price to get me. The biblical perspective is that the cross is a witness to the infinite worth of God's glory, and a witness to the immensity of the sin of my pride. What should shock us is that we have brought such contempt upon the worth of God that the very death of his Son is required to vindicate that worth. The cross stands in witness to the infinite worth of God and the infinite outrage of sin."
"I wonder if you have considered that your god may not be the God of the Bible; that the little inherited god that you got from American evangelicalism just may not be the God of the Bible."
