John Piper's brand new book A Sweet and Bitter Providence is an exploration of the book of Ruth. In the introduction, he writes,

I don't know you or your circumstances well enough to to say for sure that you should read this book.... [L]et me simply tell you why I think you might be helped if you join me in listening to the message of Ruth.

He lists 7 reasons:

1. Ruth is the Word of God.

[T]he message of Ruth is unwaveringly true. It's a rock to stand on when the terrain of ideas feels like quicksand. It's an anchor to hold us when tides are ripping....

The message of Ruth is filled with God-inspired hope.

2. Ruth is a lo

…

Continue Reading →

John Piper has been on writing leave for about five weeks and has three more. Here's a 4-question interview on how it's going.

What have you finished so far?

I have completed a manuscript titled Seek It Like Silver: The Place of Thinking in the Pursuit of God. It’s the same length as Finally Alive.

To explain the title, here’s the last paragraph of the introduction:

If you...raise your voice for understanding, if you seek it like silver...then you will...find the knowledge of God” (Proverbs 2:3-6). I need all the help I can get to love the knowledge of God more than the profits of silver. I assume you do too. So I wrote this to remind myself of the place of think…

Continue Reading →

Several of us from DG were in one of the first cars to cross the new 35W bridge this morning. And all it took was getting up at 4 AM and then waiting for a little while.

At first when I told Mike Tong, our Customer Service Manager, that I wanted to be there for the opening, he thought I was crazy. But he came around pretty quick. David Mathis, my dad's assistant, was eager to join us. Then, at the last minute, Peter Melling, our IT guy, and his wife Jessica showed up.

So we all packed into Mike's Camry at half past 4 and drove off to be a part of history.

Now, we wouldn't ordinarily put this kind of effort into trying out a new road. But obviously this was different. It was def…

Continue Reading →

When we work as unto the Lord we serve others even more excellently than if serving them were our main goal. Working as unto the Lord does not mean serving God instead of other people.

Paul tells slaves to obey their masters—and not just to obey, but to obey in everything. It sounds absurd, but he explains:

Whatever you do, work heartily as for the Lord and not for men…. You are serving the Lord Christ.

So slaves should obey their masters completely (at least completely enough that Paul didn’t feel a need to qualify). Apparently complete obedience to their masters is a key part of how they really serve Jesus, not their masters.

They serve Jesus by working even …

Continue Reading →

I often justify my anger by telling myself that I’m not like the person I’m angry at. If someone gives me the finger for no good reason while I’m driving, I instantly feel like I have a right to be mad, because I would never treat anyone that way.

I feel justified in my frustration at that rude driver, because I don’t flip people off when they tick me off. So I must be a better person, right? And if I’m a better person, I can rightly judge that driver for his wrongdoing, can’t I?

Of course, I know I sin in some ways, but I don’t sin the same as that driver. So when it comes to his sins, I have every right to be critical of him. We’re different.

But Jesus disagrees.

In the st…

Continue Reading →

In this article I want to convince as many pastors as possible to sit down and start a blog today. If I can’t convince them, then I want to convince churchgoers to hound their pastor until he does.

OK, all that’s overstatement, perhaps. You can still be a good pastor and not blog.

However, here’s why I think it would be good for you and your congregation if you did.

Pastors should blog…

1. …to write.

If you’re a pastor, you probably already know the value writing has for thinking. Through writing, you delve into new ideas and new insights. If you strive to write well, you will at the same time be striving to think well.

Then when you share new ideas and new insights, rea…

Continue Reading →

This is the 1-year anniversary of my dad's dad dying.

So I thought it would be a good day to commemorate him through this 10-minute video that was made for the pastors conference last month.

In it, my dad walks around the neighborhood and the house he grew up in and talks about the memories of his father that this brings up.

When I am most affected by being forgiven, it is often by my wife’s forgiveness of me, or by my parents’ forgiveness in the past, or even the simple way that my 3-year-old forbears this impatient father without a thought. In fact, I am consistently more moved by all of these than I am by how I’ve been forgiven by God through Jesus.

This doesn’t make sense, of course. After all, whatever my family has forgiven me for, God has forgiven me for too. And he knows the enormity of these sins far more accurately than they do. He has also forgiven me for the sins my family has no idea about—that even I have little idea about sometimes.

Usually, my wife and son and parents are as forgiving as…

Continue Reading →

A couple weeks ago, we posted John Piper's thoughts on the Yale response to "A Common Word." A few days later, we posted some thoughts from Rick Love, one of the signatories of Yale's Christian response. Then last week, in the Q&A session of our pastors conference, we got a chance to hear from Greg Livingstone who also signed it.

You can listen to his answer or read the following (mildly edited) transcript:

Greg, can you address your signing of the Yale response to "A Common Word"? And maybe for those of us who are unfamiliar with it, you could give us a little background.

Greg Livingstone: Very quickly, 138 big names in Islam made an initiative calle…

Continue Reading →

When I have to speak in front of a lot of people, I feel the way I imagine I would if I were jumping out of a helicopter. It's just not natural—at least that's what my body tells me. Nonetheless, when Scott Anderson asked me a couple months ago if I would introduce my dad at this year's pastors conference, I said yes. (And for four days leading up to it, I questioned the sanity of my decision.)

But I'm glad I did it. I love my dad a lot, and it was an honor to get to say a few things before he spoke on Tuesday.

Below is the text for my intro. (I'm only mildly embarassed to say I had it prepared 5 weeks early.) If you want to see it, it's the first 5 minutes of the video of my dad's …

Continue Reading →