They're calling it "LinSanity" in New York, and it hit fever pitch tonight after Lin's game winning 3-pointer with less than a second to play in the Knicks win. He finished with 27 points and a career-high 11 assists.

But despite the "LinSanity" he seems to have his head on straight.

The Knicks overnight phenom Jeremy Lin quotes from a section of John Piper's book Don't Waste Your Life in an online testimony recorded last June:

God created us to live with a single passion to joyfully display his supreme excellence in all the spheres of life.

Lin then adds the following commentary about his coming to treasure Jesus more than basketball success:

When Paul wrote in Philippians…

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Update 4/24: My Future at Desiring God

Increasingly, our vision for Desiring God is global. The Internet is our main way of spreading a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples through Jesus Christ. And the Internet is global. We are continually amazed who is downloading articles and messages.

Jesus has global goals for his church. He has all authority in heaven and on earth. No inch of the planet is not his! And he promises that his gospel will reach all the people groups of the world as a testimony (Matthew 24:14). And he commands that we teach everything he has commanded to all these groups (Matthew 28:20). So we see our Internet presence as bearin…

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If you were having a cup of tea with C. S. Lewis on Valentine's Day, and you asked him sincerely, "Mr. Lewis, am I better not to love because it's so risky?" — he might say something like this:

Of all arguments against love none makes so strong an appeal to my nature as “Careful! This might lead you to suffering.”

To my nature, my temperament, yes. Not to my conscience. When I respond to that appeal I seem to myself to be a thousand miles away from Christ. If I am sure of anything I am sure that his teaching was never meant to confirm my congenital preference for safe investments and limited liabilities.…

There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anythi…

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Learn a lesson from Jerry Seinfeld. Daily Bible intake is about soul survival.

Very Much into Just Surviving

When his wildly successful sitcom ended, Seinfeld went on a nationwide stand-up comedy tour called “I’m Telling You for the Last Time.” The routine was recorded for compact disc (remember those?) at New York’s Broadhurst Theater in August of 1998. At the end is a question-and-answer segment, where a zealous fan shouts, “Do you have favorite Seinfeld episode?”

Seinfeld answers,

I get this question quite often. I don’t really have a favorite; they’re all kind of my babies. I did the best I could with each one. [Audience applauds.]

You know, comedy is kind of a survival industry…

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English is the most dominant global language ever. So why are we at Desiring God doing so much work to translate our resources into other tongues? Why not just spend the same amount of time, money, and effort teaching people to read our English resources rather than doing the hard (and sometimes messy) work of translation?

To answer this and other questions about translation, I've written an article titled "A Justification for Translation." It is mainly an attempt to distill the wisdom that scholars Andrew Walls and Lamin Sanneh have shared on the subject.

If you're pressed for time and just want the main idea, here's an outline:

1. Translation is essential to the Christian faith because it …

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Consider:

• the glory of his eternality that makes the mind want to explode with the infinite thought that God never had a beginning, but simply always was;
• the glory of his knowledge that makes the Library of Congress look like a matchbox and quantum physics like a first grade reader;
• the glory of his wisdom that has never been and can never be counseled by men;
• the glory of his authority over heaven and earth and hell, without whose permission no man and no demon can move one inch;
• the glory of his providence without which not one bird falls to the ground or a single hair turns gray;
• the glory of his word that upholds the universe and keeps all the atoms and molecules together;
…

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Watch, listen to, or read all of Pastor John's sermons, articles, online books, blog posts, and more on the new Desiring God App for the iPhone and iPad.

Pastor John introduces and demonstrates the new app in this video:

As Pastor John mentions, the new app meets a growing trend among Desiring God web users:

• In 2009, less than 1% of website visits came from mobile devices.
• In 2010, just under 5% of website visits came from mobile devices.
• In 2011, 13% of all website visits originated from mobile devices.

These numbers reflect a growing trend in international mobile technology. A few stats to consider:

• Smartphones are expected to increase from 23% of total phone shipments in…

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Pastor John:

There are two levels at which the glory of God may shine forth from a Christian marriage:

One is at the structural level when both spouses fulfill the roles God intended for them — the man as leader like Christ, the wife as advocate and follower of that leadership. When those roles are lived out, the glory of God's love and wisdom in Christ is displayed to the world.

But there is another deeper, more foundational level where the glory of God must shine if these roles are to be sustained as God designed. The power and impulse to carry through the self-denial and daily, monthly, yearly dying that will be required in loving an imperfect wife and loving an i…

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Why should pastors preach about racial diversity if they're in contexts made up of the same ethnicity?

John Piper gives four reasons:

1. Christians everywhere should have a global mindset.
2. Distant from diversity tends to disguise racism issues.
3. World conflicts are ethnically oriented and we should care about them.
4. To be a faithful expositor, pastors must deal with what's in the text.

Get the book, Bloodlines: Race, Cross, and the Christian, available at Amazon and WTS Books.

John Piper is on writing leave until the first week of March — and he could use your help!

Future Grace (part of "the Piper Trilogy" along with Desiring God and The Pleasures of God), was published in 1995 and is quickly going on twenty years. So this month Pastor John is preparing a revised version for release this Fall, in time for our Desiring God National Conference on sanctification (called "Acting the Miracle: God's Work and Ours in the Mystery of Sanctification").

Here's how you could help...

If you've read Future Grace, we're eager to hear your general and/or specific questions about the book. We're also eager to hear if you have any specific recommendations for revision.…

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