When Christians Would Be Utterly Insane

Extemporaneous moments in corporate worship are sometimes the parts that stick with us the most. One such moment came in John Piper's concluding prayer of a recent sermon on John 8:30-36.

In this video, Piper confesses when Christians would be utterly insane:

Lord, I want to be free. I want my desires so changed into accord with reality so that I can do what I want to do and never regret it. That's what I want. And so I'm going hard after Jesus to change me, because many of my desires are stupid.

It occurs to me to say, Father, that we Christians would be utterly insane to envy people who pitch themselves out of the window of sin—on top of a skyscraper—to enjoy a vapor's exhilaration of the freefall of greed, or the freefall of drugs, or power, or fame, or sex, or job success—and then death. We would just be insane to envy the world. Forgive us for our folly.

And right now I plead with you that everyone in the hearing of my voice would wake up from the dreamworld that says this kind of freefall is freedom. Catch us. Snatch us right now I pray.

And I pray this in the liberating name the one who said, "You will know the truth and truth shall you free. If the son shall set you free, you will be free indeed." Amen.

Watch, listen, or download the entire sermon.