Alright, husbands, here we go. Today’s the big day. It’s time to muster our level best and not drop the ball on Valentine’s Day.

It’s not too late to make plans, or give them an upgrade — though it might be hard work scrambling at the last minute.

Even so, sometimes our best of Valentine’s intentions go awry. And when we botch it, at least we should try to learn something from it.

Here’s what John Piper learned (perhaps among other things) from botching a Valentine’s dinner. He told the story one Easter Sunday in the sermon “Irrevocable Joy.” (The Scripture text is the words of Jesus in John 16:22: “You have sorrow now, but I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice, and no one…

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We recently sat down with Lecrae to talk about his latest album, Gravity, which just won Best Gospel Album at the 55th Annual Grammy Awards. Here he raps the gospel in one minute:

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More on the gospel from Desiring God:

• The Gospel in Six Minutes (John Piper)

• The Gospel in Two Minutes (Trip Lee)

• What Makes the Good News Good (John Piper)

Our fundamental problem is that we’re sinners. But our fundamental problem doesn’t mean it is our most severe.

In John 4, Jesus and his disciples traveled through Samaria. They came to a town called Sychar and decided to stop for a break. It was around noon. The disciples went into the market to buy food, leaving Jesus sitting beside the well of a nearby field. Soon after a Samaritan woman arrived there to draw water.

She is a person like you and me, a person whose fundamental problem is sin.

“Give me a drink,” Jesus says to her. Now she is confused that he would ask this. He is Jewish and she is Samaritan and this type of request is uncommon, as John explains (John 4:9). “Why would you a…

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The Bible is amazing. God has spoken to us in a book — a glorious story about his glory and grace centered on the God-man, Jesus Christ. But the life he saves us to — our life in Christ — plays out in this world beyond the pages of his word. What we learn about him is meant to serve how we live for him.

And Paul Tripp says this is dangerous for pastors and Christian leaders.

The temptation is, as Tripp aptly describes it, “to become more excited about the world of ideas [in the Bible] ... than the loving worship of Almighty God and self-sacrificing love for the people of his church.”

Are you all about studying, but not serving? All lesson and no love? Paul Tripp helps us:

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Get Pau…

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Of course Black History is worthy of the chunks of your life as well as the cracks. But I’m laying claim to the unused parts of dressing, and brushing your teeth and driving and walking.

I am listening to The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano. It is Equiano’s autobiography published in 1789, and is one of the first widely read slave narratives. I would like to invite you to listen with me to some significant history during Black History Month. This book or three others. It is all free, both audio and written.

Near the end of chapter two Equiano calls for “nominal Christians” to live up to Jesus’s command: “Do unto all men as you would men should do unto you.” It gives a …

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My oldest daughter isn’t sleeping well. It’s the dark. From fear of what might be under her bed, to who might be looking through her window, she has her reasons for preferring the lights on.

In fact, she has started a new nightly routine. After the house is settled and her parents are quiet, presumably asleep, she secretly slips out of her room to flip on the nearby hallway light and then returns to bed. Somehow she finds a measure of comfort from the crease of light between the floor and the bottom of her door.

But she shouldn’t be doing this. The rule is to stay in bed. And a few nights ago I caught her red-handed.

I was standing quietly in the dark hall and heard her scurrying around b…

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Darwinian theorists say that our obsessive selfishness is programmed into our genes. No disagreement there. We know that. The Bible describes the effects of the fall as pervading everything. This would include the genetic level.

But they hypothesize that the reasons for this selfishness is survival and procreation. Our genes want to save themselves.

Well, frankly, this doesn’t do our selfishness justice. There is a deeper depravity at work. We don’t want to merely survive; we want to subjugate. We don’t merely want to procreate; we want to possess. Down to our very genes, we want to rule our world and be worshiped by others. Our genes aren’t merely selfish. They have a God delusion.

But t…

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When God called my husband and me to plant a church, I said yes.

My yes to church planting echoed the vow I made on my wedding day, that I would support my husband in any ministry God might give him. As he does with us all, God has not stopped asking for my yes and he has not stopped showering his faithfulness on any willingness I offer him.

Sisters, I believe this — a willing heart — is the key to our fruitfulness and joy. And yet our hearts are the very things that will be tempted and tried throughout the church planting process. Feelings of loneliness, resentment, discouragement, or exhaustion lure us to wander from Him.

The temptations are subtle but real:

• to turn to others, to…

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In rural America, off a country road, on the soft soil of a weathered field, stands a sobering message for every passer-by: Go to church or the devil will get you!

The words are neatly strewn across a homemade billboard adorned with flood lights and a painted silhouette of a red figure, apparently Satan, holding a sling-blade. Go to church, the warning hisses, or be his victim.

As hokey as it sounds, the warning is right, you know, at least in a sense.

Now to be clear, if the sign means (and it likely does) that you’d better attend a weekly meeting or else Lucifer will eat your lunch, then no, that’s not right. That would be Anglo folk religion — more akin to African animism than anythin…

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Recently Pastor John released his short book Risk Is Right, a significantly expanded version of a chapter originally published in Don't Waste Your Life. In Risk Is Right, Pastor John claims the so-called safety we seek to preserve in our lives is really a myth.

We asked him to explain “safety is a myth” in a recent Ask Pastor John podcast (episode 10). In part he explained it this way:

You can’t put enough padlocks on your door and enough bars on your window to keep a heart attack from happening. There is no guarantee that anybody is going to live another breath. And therefore all the efforts that we make to keep ourselves safe are ultimately an illusion in terms of absolute securi…

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