Your power to give a compassionate witness about Jesus is in direct proportion to how precious Jesus is to you.

To be ruled by the Spirit is to be ruled by the love that the Father has for Jesus.

Legalism is a more dangerous disease than alcoholism because it doesn't look like one.

It is God who works in us to will our prayers, but we always experience it as our own resolve and decision.

Our love for one another should make us eager to help one another get to God.

The question that Jesus drives us to ask again and again is not, "How much should I give?" but rather, "How much dare I keep?"

We ought to seek to win people to Christ by giving valid reasons for the Bible’s claims about him.

If the church has no compelling reasons for believing the biblical portrait of Jesus, then we are acting like well-trained animals who can be turned this way and that by arbitrary incentives.

If you want Christ to be with you, you must depend on him.

If you ever meet a man who cares nothing for the praise and approval of men (Mark 12:14), but whose one controlling desire is to glorify God whom he loves with all his heart, believe that man. He is true.

No church can remain fruitless if it soaks the seed of the Word in fervent, hungry prayer week after week.

Turn away from all the intellectual, physical, and religious tactics the world uses to evade its guilt, and rest in Jesus.

John Piper narrates his start-of-the-day fight for faith.

There is no true freedom where happiness depends on denying the inevitable; there is only slavery disguised in a thousand forms of fun and busyness.

We are unendingly restless until we take up Christ's yoke and learn from him.

Lotteries feed bad desires and lead to bad stewardship.

We don't have a deep sense of peace and fulfillment when we have successfully deluded everybody about who we really are or what we really feel or think. There is a deep (and I believe God-given) longing to be authentic, not to be hypocrites.

Trusting Christ as Savior, surrendering to him as Lord, and orienting all of your family relations on him, transforms the home into a little heaven on earth.

Being filled with the Spirit is parallel to getting drunk with wine.

We crave to be moved by some rare glimpse of greatness. We yearn for a vision of glory.

Pastor John weighs the impact of the Metrodome opening near the church.

Jesus was not accidentally entangled in a web of injustice. The saving benefits of his death for sinners were not an afterthought. Jesus saw that the time had come and set his face to fulfill his mission: to die in Jerusalem for our sake.

How can Jesus say that God is "not the God of the dead" and Paul say that Jesus is "Lord of the dead?"

When Jesus commits his mother to John's care, he is showing us how our needs will be met when we leave everything to follow him.

Faith never says, "The righteousness that leads to life is inaccessible." But faith recognizes its own helplessness and gladly accepts this righteousness as a gift from God.

Almost any impersonal act can be brought to life and made precious and personal by an act of dedicating it to someone.

What counts in the new people is not who your parents are but whom you live for; and therefore a new symbol for the new covenant people is given, baptism.

One aim of preaching is to build a people who think biblically.

If you want to enjoy God's peace and be the aroma of his grace in the world, your knowledge of him has to grow.

How can we explain the surprising similarity between 2 Peter and Jude?

If the knowledge of God's glorious promises does not spur us on to strive against the tide, then we will be barren and fruitless and drift to our destruction.

Don't exclude God from your recreation. God wills it, and it's his will to be in on it.

The difference between mythical speculations and Christian faith is history. Our doctrines are not the result of clever head-work. They are the result of historical observation.

Pastor John makes known his schedule and availability to the people of Bethlehem.

The meaning of Scripture does not change with every new reader or every new reading. It cannot be twisted to mean whatever we like. It is what it is, unchanging and unending.

There are worse things to lose than health, and sickness may help us gain what is best.

Even though the rebellious and the licentious today may think they are safe, they should learn that "from of old their condemnation has not been idle, and their destruction is not sleeping."

Take worship seriously. None of us knows when it will be our last day in the house of the Lord.

The more you know of Christ and his way, the more severe your judgment will be for not trusting and obeying him.

A healthy church will be hungry for sound teaching. And a healthy church will feed that hunger.

Confident expectation of a new world of righteousness empowers us to live for peace and purity in the present.

We don't need to feel lovable, because we aren't. Grace for the unlovable is the gospel.

A life lived for the world will go naked into judgment; a life lived for Christ will be laden with eternal riches.

Five suggestions for what dads can do to prevent more abortions.

The best fertilizer for our hope and godliness is the knowledge of our future in God's grace.

There is no reason to think that after 2,500 years Israel now can claim God’s sanction for her unbelief and rebellion. She stands under judgment until she repents and turns to her Savior-Messiah.

John Piper openly contemplates the weightiness of pastoral ministry and is sustained knowing that God is God.

Silence about Christ is dogma. Not to teach the infinite value of Christ is to teach that he is negligible.

John Piper gives an update on what happened at the annual meeting of the conference of which Bethlehem is a part.

How different, how wonderful the use of our mouths would be if we lived by faith in the God who made the mouth and not by sight—by looking at our own clumsy tongue.

God is not nearly so impressed with our late nights and early mornings as he is with the peaceful trust that casts all anxieties on him and sleeps.

We can know God's will and maintain trust in his help, if we are familiar with the trajectories of his Word.

By the time we know a problem exists, God has already been working on it and his solution is on the way.

How does a church become and remain fertile ground for moblizing and supporting missionaries?

The good news of the Bible is not that we are not worms, but that God helps worms who trust him.

How can I admit that I am a worm and yet “love my neighbor as myself”?

There is no necessary connection between age and wisdom, or youth and folly. Wisdom comes from the Lord and is offered to all ages.

There are six admonitions for how a church should treat its pastors.

If God undertakes to work for us, he cannot fail. He will succeed in providing all the services we need.

Every Christian has received a gift from God which he is responsible to use for the good of the church and for the glory of God.

What fools God makes of men who strive against their Maker!

God will fight against us and clog the joy of our lives until we return with our whole heart to him. For his purpose is to be God alone in the midst of his people.

What does it mean to be written in the Lamb's book of life?

Every staff on which we try to lean in our pride will snap and pierce us through. One refuge will be secure: God.

John Piper poetically announces his wife's pregnancy.

Spiritual leadership is knowing where God wants people to be and taking the initiative, using God’s methods and power, to get them there.

Conversion isn't just changing your mind but exchanging the love of comfort for the love of goodness and justice.

Not all of God’s grace is behind us pushing to obey. There is also grace in front of us beckoning us to follow.

In order to be acclaimed Messiah and Lord, the Son of God had to come, defeat the enemy, and lead his people out of bondage in triumph over sin and Satan and death. And that he did on Good Friday and Easter.

Each day is on sale for anyone who will purchase it. If we do not purchase it, we lose it—forever.

Would I gain my life before a holy God if I died tonight? Am I ready to take my stand in the divine courtroom and hear the Judge pass an eternal sentence on me?

The Lord is never hurried because he has all things under control. What a steady power should mark his people!

The violent nation will not boast forever. Very soon the recompense will come, and after that all the nations will render an account to God.

Everything we do from the time a child is born should be aimed at leading him to faith.

When we make disciples, we bid people to come and die to their old, destructive ways and to live for Jesus, who loved them and gave himself for them.

John Piper introduces a new program at Bethlehem for raising up young candidates for full-time Christian ministry.

The belly of a fish hardly seems like salvation. But it was.

How are we morally distinct from ordinary society with its prudence, respectability, and good breeding?

Nothing you do is a trifle if you do it in the name of God. He will shake heaven and earth to fill your labor with splendor.

God has always delighted to show his power through apparent defeat.

The fountain of forgiveness has been opened for you. And if you cleanse yourself through faith in that fountain, all the subsequent promises to God's people are yours.

Christ became a man because the death of a man who was more than man was needed.

God uses little towns and youngest sons and slingshots to magnify his glory by contrast, to show that he is not the least dependent on human glory or greatness or achievement.

John Piper expresses his gratitude to numerous people at Bethlehem.

Christ came at Christmas to build a bridge across the chasm of sin to eternal life, but the name of the bridge is purity. The only way to eternal life is along the path of sanctification.

The point of Hosea is that God exalts his mercy by not giving up on his promiscuous wife.

The grace of God is addicting. The more you experience his power, the more you want.

“I do not consider my conclusions novel from a historical viewpoint. Nevertheless, with regard to both the righteousness of God and the election of men, the conclusions are not in vogue today, and so exegetical explanation and defense are needed” (p. 15).

The essence of lukewarmness is the statement, "I need nothing." The lukewarm are spiritually self-satisfied.

Consistent Christians never want to exclude Jesus from anything they do.

Jesus makes it clear that eternal life hangs on whether we are ready when he comes.

Pray for total healing and total salvation. But also pray for smaller steps to be made on the way.