Simple? Complex? How should we understand the process of sanctifcation? We've recently featured a series of videos from our friends at CCEF that detail the biblical and practical dynamics of growing in grace, which Tony discusses in this latest episode of Behind the Blog. David also gives some helpful background to recent posts, along with a few highlights on upcoming events and resources.

As always, it is a great pleasure to serve you, our readers, on the blog. We trust the Father, according to the riches of his glory, uses our content as a small means through which Jesus dwells in your hearts by faith. Thanks for reading!

You …

Continue Reading →

God will keep his children. This is the basic and glorious truth in the doctrine of eternal security. God will never let those who are his fall away. He will complete the work he began in us. And one of the essential means by which he does this is the faith-sustaining truth we speak into one another's lives. So says the writer of Hebrews, "exhort one another every day, as long as it is called 'today'."

Expounding Hebrews 3:12–15 in this week's sermon, John Piper gets at the role of community in the perseverance of the saints and gives helpful application for what it looks like in the everyday.

Stream or download "Eternal Security Is a Community Project."

Lord… You have the words of eternal life. (John 6:68)

Christians are word people. We’re really into words because the Founder of Christianity is the Word (John 1:1). He came to earth to deliver a message in words. Those of us who have believed his words recognize them as the “words of eternal life” (John 6:68). And we seek to speak these words to others so they too can have eternal life. We call these words the gospel.

Christians are also book people. We’re really into books because our Founder left us a book, a collection of the words he determined are most important for us to know and remember.

This means we’re not into books merely because they’re good for us — as in a good book…

Continue Reading →

---

UPDATE (April 23, 2013): Solid Joys is now a fully functional website, available in English and Korean. A Korean Android app is now available as well.

UPDATE (December 6, 2012): This app is now available for Android, too!

---

Solid Joys is a free application available from Desiring God (for iPhone and iPad) which provides a short daily devotional excerpt from the ministry of John Piper.

We've identified 365 of the best excerpts from Piper's printed books and online content which are able to stand well on their own when removed from their original context, and we've made sure to keep the excerpts relatively short.

The goal is that you'll be able to dive in for just a moment each day and come a…

Continue Reading →

God absolutely is. This is the most basic and ultimate fact there has ever been. The triune God — the Lord — is. He always has been and always will be. He is not to be assumed. He is not a mere foundation upon which we move on to more important things. The great driving passion of our lives should be to know him and make him known as glorious.

This is heart of John Piper's most recent sermon that kicks off a new series of eleven messages on the foundational realities that have shaped Bethlehem Baptist Church. The series is rooted in his conviction that Bethlehem's greatest days are ahead as Jason Meyer transitions into the role of Pastor for Preaching and Vision.

This first sermon fo…

Continue Reading →

People don’t really care how many books we’ve read. So it’s a waste of time to read kinds of books or numbers of books to impress others.

And it’s also a waste if we spend most of our reading time escaping into a fantasy. I don’t mean fantasy as a genre. I’ve seen glorious realities while sojourning in Middle Earth. I’m talking about literary fast food that tastes good but doesn’t nourish — the kind of stuff that leaves you spiritually sluggish.

Your reading time is precious. So read to see more of what’s real. Read to understand more of what’s true. Ransack books hunting for joy. Read to get glimpses of glory. Read to steer out of your perspective ruts. Read to stir your affections — …

Continue Reading →

I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh. (Romans 9:2–3)

I just read Finish the Mission and was shaken by quotes like this, just as I was when I heard them at the Desiring God 2011 National Conference:

Hundreds of millions of men and women who have rebelled against the sovereign glory of God have never heard about the saving grace of God. So what does this mean for our lives? And what does this mean for the church?¹

And,

If there is any Scripture at all, this is true — that those who stubbornly refuse to submit to the gospel, and to love…

Continue Reading →

"The worth and excellency of a soul is to be measured by the object of its love," Henry Scougal wrote in his 17th-century work, The Life of God in the Soul of Man. And if this is true of humans, might it also be true of God?

That is the starting place to John Piper's book, The Pleasures of God: Meditations on God's Delight in Being God. He recently led a five-hour seminar on the book in Minneapolis, all of which is now available for free.

Stream or download the seminar in three parts:

The Pleasures of God (Session 1):

---

The Pleasures of God (Session 2):

---

The Pleasures of God (Session 3):

 Life is Christ. (Philippians 1:21)

One of the great hoaxes of our time is that we’ve learned to worship posers. American heroes are mainly entertainers. Our heroes don’t have to do anything particularly great, they just need to look and sound great. Lewis was right in more ways than one: “we are far too easily pleased.”

My beef is not with skillful entertainers as such. Working hard to become skillful with the gifts God gave us is a good thing, if used for redemptive purposes.

My beef is with us. We’ve made them cultural gods. They dominate our t-shirts, bedroom walls, Facebook pages, and living room plasma screens. We listen to them in our ear buds and Twitter feeds. And we bestow o…

Continue Reading →

“The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty; yet… they are soon gone, and we fly away” (Psalm 90:10).

My children begin school this week. The summer is passing us by and we’re all groaning a bit. It went so fast.

I turned 47 this summer. 47? I remember my Dad turning 47. How’d I get here so soon? My oldest child turned 16 this summer. My second child turns 14 this week. But they were just toddlers! We were just trying to figure out kindergarten options for them, weren’t we?

Life is a vapor. Even if we live to old age our lives “are soon gone” (Psalm 90:10). But most people either desperately try to grab as much life as they can by pursuing passing things, …

Continue Reading →