My plan for this fall—and I want to stress it is a plan, not a promise—is a 7-part series on historically significant sins. It will be entitled “Spectacular Sins and Their Global Purpose in the Glory of Christ.” The first message, on August 12, will be an overview of where we are going and why, as it relates to our life as a church and our witness in the city and the world.

Here are some goals for this series:

• To show that the Christian faith is not like Hinduism or Buddhism or vague New Age Spiritualism but is rooted in and made up of objective historical reality outside ourselves: God, Satan, creation, human beings, sin, fallenness, providence, and divine puposefulness in all thing…

Continue Reading →

Torchbearers International began in the heart of a young Englishman, Ian Thomas, who at the age of 19 came to understand that “it is no longer I but Christ who lives in me.” This timeless flame of truth has been spreading around the world through the ministries of Torchbearers International, calling all people of all ages from all nations back to the reality that the Christian life is not just a religion but a relationship with the living God made know in his Son, Jesus Christ.

So writes Chris Thomas (Ian’s eldest son), the General Director of Torchbearers from Estes Park. That “young Englishman” completed his course on Tuesday, July 31, 2007. There will be a memorial ser…

Continue Reading →

I wrote this poem when I heard of a newlywed waiting for her husband after the bridge collapsed.

Listen

O God, please let him be unconscious,
With his wallet lost, unknown
In some draped cubicle, with nurses
Near, and scrolling through his phone.

You never stayed so late. O Jesus,
I would give this house, and weep
With joy to know he stayed at
Work, until he fell asleep.

It’s midnight. I’m afraid to call, or
Even look too closely at the cars
Above the water, with the broken
Windows, glimpsed between the twisted bars.

I sleep. And you are there, the current
Of the Mississippi in your hair,
Caressed, so still, so still, so breathless,
Love, as when last night I touched you there.

I wake…

Continue Reading →

See our video team's footage of the scene yesterday and listen to John Piper talk about why there is suffering in the world.

Continue Reading →

At about 6 PM tonight the bridge of Interstate 35W over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis collapsed. I am writing this about three hours after the bridge fell. The bridge is located within sight of Bethlehem Baptist Church. Most of us who minister at the church cross this bridge several times a week. At this point I don’t know if any staff was on the bridge. Desiring God offices are about a mile from the bridge.

There are no firm facts at this point about the total number of injuries and fatalities. When we crossed the bridge Tuesday on our way out of town, there was extensive repair work happening on the surface of the bridge with single lane traffic. One speculates about the unusual s…

Continue Reading →

About 2,000 feet of one of the most trafficked bridges in Minneapolis collapsed into the Mississippi River during rush hour at 6:05 this evening. Reports are still coming in. The bridge is located only about a mile away from the DG office and supports the busiest freeway near the city. Many of us cross this bridge frequently. There are no clear estimates regarding how many vehicles were on the bridge or how many deaths have occurred. We expect there will be many.

Pray for those who are injured and for families of loved ones who have perished. And pray that God will guide us in responding to this tragedy in a way that points to the mercy and patience of God the way Jesus did in Luke 13.

We've received quite a bit of feedback regarding John Piper's comments on racially diverse portraits of Jesus, so I want to offer some additional thoughts that I hope will be clarifying.

A few people have asked if it's a waste of time to discuss what color Jesus should be in artistic portrayals of him. There are certainly more important issues, but I think it is a worthwhile question, one reason being that it can lead to discussions of at least two deeper, more important issues: race and art.

Most of the feedback we've received has touched more on the artistic than the racial aspect, so that's what I'll respond to here.

If the goal of art is to strictly represent reality, t…

Continue Reading →

Listen to John Piper talk about whether artistic portrayals of Jesus should be racially diverse.

Update: I've added some follow-up thoughts in a second post on this issue. 

This is a note of deep gratitude and tribute for the life of Raymond Ortlund Sr., who went to be with Jesus on Sunday evening, July 22, 2007. You can read the life facts in the news post and see a personal post from his family. But here is why I must say a word of public thanks.

In 1968 I had just come to Fuller Seminary in Pasadena, California. I was naïve theologically and foolish in my attitudes to the Lord’s greatest institution, the local church. I was still single and actually pondered – you are free to laugh out loud – whether there was a future for the local church. I was disillusioned with much of it and would walk the streets of Pasadena Sunday morning wondering how I coul…

Continue Reading →

Not that we need psychologists to show that the human heart is desperately sick, but apparently there is some scientific recognition now that babies are deceitful. What's amazing is not that infants lie as early as six months, but that "until now, psychologists had thought the developing brains were not capable of the difficult art of lying until four years old."

"Difficult art of lying"? I've never found it that hard, myself. And my two-year-old takes after me in that regard. Lying comes quite naturally; always telling the truth is what's difficult.

Dr. Reddy, the psychologist leading the study of infant lying, "thinks children use early fibs to discover what kinds of lie work in…

Continue Reading →