If it weren’t for Pentecost, we wouldn’t know about Easter.

For most of us, tomorrow isn’t flagged on our calendars as Pentecost Sunday. But it is a big deal for Christians, and there are at least three reasons why it’s a day worth celebrating.

Catching Up on the Context

First, the back-story. Recall that Jesus spent forty days after his resurrection with his disciples (Acts 1:3). Imagine those moments — the risen Savior in a glorified body talking and praying with his close friends (Luke 24:39–43). But it cannot last. Jesus must ascend to the Father and establish his everlasting reign by receiving, as the God-man, all dominion, power, and authority (Luke 24:44–51; cf. Daniel 7:13–14).

W…

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We have never known days like these at Desiring God.

John Piper is now on staff full-time at DG and has begun a more unfettered ministry to the wider world through writing and speaking.

Along the way, we want to make it easy for you to see what he’s up to and hear what he’s been saying lately. Here’s a rich baker’s dozen of new messages from Pastor John so far in 2013.

1. “Joy As the Power to Suffer in the Path of Love for the Sake of Liberation”
Passion Conference | Atlanta, GA

The year began with a bang, as John addressed more than 60,000 college students in the Georgia Dome on how our joy in God frees us to suffer the sake of others’ freedom.

2. “Sailing to the Nations to Finish th…

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It’s a new start for an old tradition in American Journalism, says Marvin Olasky, editor-in-chief of World Magazine. The news poem. Says Olasky,

Hardly a vile murder or a military victory went by without colonial poets bemoaning or celebrating the occasion in verse, with the work then published on a single page “broadside” and sold for a penny. Happily, my favorite pastor/theologian, John Piper, is also a poet, and below are his thoughts on justice in regard to Connecticut’s school shooting and Boston’s Marathon bombing.

Worldmag.com has posted Piper’s news poem “Grace Forfeited: Adam, Tamerlan, and the Lady” with the short introduction by Olasky.

Also, here at Desiring God, you can read …

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God is not content for us just to understand the idea that nothing is too hard for the Lᴏʀᴅ (Jeremiah 32:17). He wants us to have the overwhelming joy of experiencing it. But the sometimes agonizing period between his promise and his provision can push us to the brink of what we think we can believe, as it did for Abraham and Sarah.

[This imaginative conversation takes place shortly after Genesis 17:22.]

Abram entered the tent, his eyes on the ground, his mind a world away. He was breathing hard. Sarai was repairing a cloak. She watched him as he walked to the back corner and collapsed on the cushions with a sigh. She recognized the bodily weariness of a divine encounter.

“The Lᴏʀᴅ has sp…

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Dear ______,

I just want you to know that I understand.

I understand how it feels to be in love with a woman. To want nothing more than to be with her forever. Feeling as if the universe has played a cruel joke on your heart by allowing it to fall into the hands of a creature that looks just like you.

I too was a lesbian. I had same-sex attractions as early as five-years old. As I grew up, those feelings never subsided. They only grew. I would find myself having crushes on my female best friends, but I was far too ashamed to admit it to them — let alone to myself.

At the age of 17, I finally made the decision to pursue these desires. I entered into a relationship with a young lady who be…

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“It is a highly needed and valuable procedure.”

That statement above is referring to late-term abortion. In other words, says LateTermAbortion.net, it is highly needed and valuable that deadly poison be injected into the heart of an unborn child if the mother so chooses.

This reveals a cruel irony of late term abortionist Kermit Gosnell, the man convicted of murdering viable children after they were born alive during his abortion procedures. He claimed the babies were dead before leaving their mother’s wombs because his intra-cardiac injection had stopped their hearts, and therefore, he wasn’t guilty of murder. A matter of inches in one direction makes it “a guiltless procedure,” but in th…

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A month ago today the bombs went off in Boston. Through the surge of media, many of us were left on the edge of our seats for a week. There was shock and confusion and deep questions. In this latest episode of Behind the Blog we talk about how we responded to this tragedy on the blog, including our personal wrestling with how to process events like this.

Other topics in this episode include an update on John Piper’s upcoming speaking schedule and wider ministry. We talk about our latest publications now available and our newest ebook, Doctrine Matters. We also introduce our National Conference this fall, “The Romantic Rationalist: God, Work, & Imagination in the Work of C.S. Lewis.”

St…

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Fifty years ago this fall, C.S. Lewis quietly crossed from this life into the next.

While the assassination of John F. Kennedy captured the world’s attention on November 22, 1963, one Clive Staples Lewis — his friends called him Jack — breathed his last and took one big step toward becoming the kind of glorious creature in the coming new creation he speaks about in his famous sermon “The Weight of Glory.”

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you…

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Do you know the exact moment you were saved? Saul of Tarsus did. As did the great Augustine. Many in church history have testified to dramatic, unmistakable experiences of the new birth, when God touched their dead hearts and gave them new spiritual life by his Holy Spirit.

But this is not the experience of most. Count Tullian Tchividjian among us.

Tullian is the pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He grew up in a Christian home — his grandfather is Billy Graham — yet he rebelled defiantly for a season, and was born again in God’s good timing, with dramatic change in his life trajectory. But even the effects of his regeneration being as radical as they ar…

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At Desiring God, we are happy and unapologetic advocates of the sanctity of human life, beginning at conception. We love waving the banner for life, not just around the Roe anniversary in January, but throughout the year. Earlier this year, John Piper answered questions for a student in Asia related to abortion and the cause of life during his 33-year pastorate at Bethlehem Baptist. In an effort to keep the sanctity of human life regularly before our readers, here are the questions and John’s answers. –Editor

1. How does Bethlehem Baptist Church offer a solution to help prevent abortions or deal with women who have had abortions?

• We preach at least once a year on the nature and evil of abo…

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