The foundation to our joy in God is God's own joy in himself. Christian Hedonism only makes sense when we understand God's supremacy in all things. He really is sovereign and he really is good.

And the five points of Calvinism are where we see these truths come together. The doctrines of grace articulate how God saves us in Jesus, for his glory and our joy.

This is why I'm excited about a forthcoming book from Crossway: Greg Forster's The Joy of Calvinism: Knowing God's Personal, Unconditional, Irresistible, Unbreakable Love (preorder from Amazon).

Forster has written this book to show that "real Calvinism is all about joy" . . .

I want to tell you what Calvinism says, especially…

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John Piper and Darrin Patrick recently discussed the Bible's teaching on biblical manhood and womanhood. In this 15-minute video they get to the heart of our cultural epidemic and chart the way forward for how the church can help:

Time-markers:

00:42 — The absence of men and its implications.

03:01 — Definitions for manhood and womanhood.

07:47 — What can the church do to help this situation?

10: 00 — How does biblical complementarity aid evangelism?

12: 51 — How does manhood and womanhood get completed in Jesus?

Stream or download the interview.

Darrin's topic at the 2012 Conference for Pastors is on how to build men for the mission of the local church. The conference is just a few weeks …

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John Piper read G. K. Chesterton at the advice of Clyde Kilby, one of his professors of English Literature at Wheaton College back in the day. And this book recommendation from Kilby didn't come in a vacuum. Piper writes about how Kilby himself was amazed at the world, and that, with a pastoral heart and a poet's eye, he influenced his students to really believe Psalm 19:1, "The heavens declare the glory of God."

In a 1976 lecture, Kilby gave ten steps on how to stay alive to the beauty of God's world:

1. At least once every day I shall look steadily up at the sky and remember that I, a consciousness with a conscience, am on a planet traveling in space with wonderfully mysterious things a…

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G. K. Chesterton:

When we are very young children we don't need fairy tales: we only need tales. Mere life is interesting enough.

A child of seven is excited by being told that Tommy opened a door and saw a dragon. But a child of three is exicted by being told that Tommy opened a door.

Boys like romantic tales; but babies like realistic tales — because they find them romantic. . . . This proves that even nursery tales only echo an almost pre-natal leap of interest and amazement.

These tales say that apples are golden only to refresh the forgotten moment when we found that they were green. They make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run with water…

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Caiaphas schemed against Jesus (John 11:49–53). It was horrible. It was injustice.

And yet, the whole thing was God's loving set of events he planned for good. God was up to something bigger. It was for the salvation of you and me.

John Piper recently led a short devotional on this theme with the friends and staff of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association in Charlotte, NC.

Stream or download the 24-minute audio.

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P. S. One notable part of the audio is the warm introduction by 89-year old saint Cliff Barrows. Barrows was a friend of Pastor John's father, the late Bill Piper, and comments that he actually burped Pastor John as a baby back in the 1940s. . . . (yes, that…

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Seth Godin:

Fitzgerald nailed it when he described Jay Gatsby’s attitude: “What would be the use of doing great things if I could have a better time telling her what I was going to do?” It’s easy to fall so in love with the idea of starting that we never actually start. (Poke the Box, 75)

One of Godin’s goals in this little book is to expose the truth about failure — it's not as bad as we all think.

And yet, the fear of failure is paralyzing. It's the great deterrent to our starting things, to our taking risks. It is, as Godin explains, the dirt that buries us in the status quo program of the world around us.

Now, in my opinion, the biggest and simplest takeaway from reading G…

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Pastor John:

What then should a pastor do to promote a passion among his people to see God glorified by the in-gathering of his sheep from the thousands of unreached people groups around the world?

My answer: above everything else, be the kind of person and the kind of preacher whose theme and passion is the majesty of God. . . .

The most important thing I think pastors can do to arouse and sustain a passion for world evangelization is week in and week out to help their people see the crags and peaks and icy cliffs and snowcapped heights of God's majestic character. And let me sharpen the point in two ways:

1. We should labor in our preaching to clear the mists and fog away from the sharp …

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The newest episode of Theology Refresh features a discussion with Russell Moore on the person of Christ.

The doctrine of the person of Jesus — fully God, fully man, one person with two natures — has everything to do with how we live.

In this 14-minute audio Moore encourages pastors that Jesus is with us, that he really does shoulder with us everything it means to be human.

Stream or download the podcast.

[Subscribe to Theology Refresh through iTunes.]

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Recent Theology Refresh podcasts —

• John Piper on the Celebrity Factor and Pastoral Ministry
• Ray Ortlund on Union with Christ
• Jared Wilson on the Doctrine of the Trinity

The New Year is a great time to reconfigure the way we do things. And it can be a bit overwhelming.

Diet, exercise, memorization habits, reading lists, time management — all this is good. But perhaps the best place to start — and the foundation to all the rest — is the primary means of grace in the Christian life, the Word and prayer.

For the Word, Justin Taylor has put together a great list of Bible reading plans to consider. As for prayer, you might also find that some systematic approaches are helpful.

A Few Systems to Consider

Paul Miller warns us that systems can become rote, making us mechanical and mindless in our praying. They can desensitize our communing with God as a per…

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Charles Spurgeon:

But here is the joy, here is the peace of Christians, that our salvation is a finished one! We have not a farthing to pay to complete the ransom of our souls. We have not a stitch to set to finish the robe of our salvation. We have not an act to perform, a prayer to offer, a tear to weep, a thought to think in order to finish the work of our redemption! I know that all these things shall be worked in us and, that by the Spirit of God we shall be made to do them — but all that shall not be with any view to the completion of our salvation — that was finished in the Person of the bleeding Lamb of Calvary! . . .

Either Christ completed all that was necessary for your …

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