However the terms are refined, the main tenets of Calvinism are structured around the five-petaled acronym TULIP. But too often missing in this structure is the “sap of delight,” as Pastor John calls it in his biography of Augustine.

In the following excerpt from that biography, Pastor John explains why we need a delight-drenched theology like that of Augustine.

R. C. Sproul says, “We need an Augustine or a Luther to speak to us anew lest the light of God’s grace be not only overshadowed but be obliterated in our time.”

Yes, we do. But we also need tens of thousands of ordinary pastors, who are ravished with the extraordinary sovereignty of joy that belongs to and comes from God alo…

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We return to the studio to look back at a few blog highlights from the last week and open with Russell Moore’s post, Fake Love, Fake War, and the story of how the post originated in a bumpy bus on an iPhone in the hills of Italy.

Go behind the blog in five minutes or less.

You can also listen here.

Blog posts mentioned in this episode:

• Fake Love, Fake War: Why So Many Men Are Addicted to Internet Porn and Video Games (Russell Moore)
• DG National Conference, “Act the Miracle”
• How Summertime Helps Us Pray (Jonathan Parnell)
• Summers Are for Seeking Christ (Tony Reinke)
• Are You Mom Enough? (Rachel Pieh Jones)
• The En…

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The creation surrounding us is the product of the triune God. That is incredible enough. But take one more profound step and we discover, as Pastor John explains in The Pleasures of God, that “creation is an expression of the overflow of that life and joy that the Father and the Son have in each other” (72).

To put this another way, we see a kaleidoscope of galaxies, animals, and music genres because the Father and Son enjoy a kaleidoscope of delight in each other, and it is a spilling-over delight. As the triune delight spills over in creation, it expands and radiates outward for us to share in. Out of this throbbing delight we have creation, a creation that speaks.

We live on a sphere …

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From Ray Ortlund's excellent commentary, Proverbs: Wisdom That Works (Crossway, 2012), pages 51–52:

Proverbs 2:1–22 opens a door to every one of us. We all want to grow in Christ. In this passage God is telling us how we can move forward.

If you see a sign in front of a church, “Revival here next week,” you can be sure there won’t be a revival there next week. We do not program God or control God. But in this passage God himself tells us how to take our next steps into newness of life. We want to change. We want to get closer to him, closer than we have ever gone before, closer than we have ever dreamed of going. Now God is telling us how. . . .

Proverbs 2 is one of the most helpfu…

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Memorial Day is here, school is nearly done, and the days are growing longer and hotter. The firstfruits of summer have arrived.

As the summer season approached in 1995, Pastor John reminded his church of the spiritual benefits of summer, along with the annual temptations to spiritual laziness in his article, “Setting Our Minds on Things Above in Summer” (May 31, 1995).

He writes:

Every season is God’s season, but summer has a special power.

Jesus Christ is refreshing, but flight from him into Christless leisure makes the soul parched. At first it may feel like freedom and fun to skimp on prayer and neglect the Word, but then we pay: shallowness, powerlessness, vulnerability to si…

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John Piper, Desiring God (Multnomah, 2011), 10:

God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.

(Design submitted by Jacob Abshire.)

I find it easy to slip into vague gratefulness, and vague gratefulness is as hollow as a light bulb. Mostly I notice this at the dinner table with my family. The vague verbiage I speak over our food is a reflection of my vague thoughts about God and his provisions spread across the table. (It’s certainly not a reflection of my wife’s cooking!)

If you find this vaguity in your prayers, Douglas Wilson offers us a remedy in his new book Father Hunger. In a section on vocation, Wilson points us to look deeper into the gracious provisions from God:

We have to understand that all Christians are called, and are called to labor self-consciously and faithfully in their calling, whether it is l…

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What follows is a collection of 20 quotes that caught my attention as I read Douglas Wilson’s new book, Father Hunger: Why God Calls Men to Love and Lead Their Families (Thomas Nelson, 2012):

"In human history, there will never be a more perfect father-and-son moment than this moment between Father and Son [Matthew 3:16–17]. This is the keynote — pleasure. This is the pitch that a father/son relationship needs to match — ‘well pleased.’ When we don’t match that pitch, a lot of things start going wrong.” (12)

“The fact that these other things have not been added to us, the fact that we live in fatherless times, reveals our attitudes toward God the Father. Father hunger is one of the chief…

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Puritan Thomas Watson, A Body of Divinity:

If anything can make us rise off our bed of sloth, and serve God with all our might, it should be this, the hope of our near enjoyment of God forever.

(Design submitted by Jennifer Knight.)

Previous images —

• O Mother, Great Is Thy Power
• e-Boasting
• The Chief End of Man

 

 

Four superheroes unite in "The Avengers Initiative" — Thor, The Incredible Hulk, Captain America, and the Iron Man — a collaborative of the world's greatest powers, called together when cosmic evil threatens the planet.

This is the storyline behind the The Avengers (2012), a movie that brought together these superheroes into one allegiance. And audiences have responded. In its first three days in U.S. theaters, the movie earned a record-smashing $200.3 million in box office revenue.

We are attracted to this team of superheroes because they are a response team called on to suppress evil. But when we walk out of the movie theater, we are faced with questions. Why don't we see God destroyin…

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