Enjoy Something Bigger than Yourself

Article by

Founder & Teacher, desiringGod.org

Today a year ago, my father and grandfather were reunited. William S. H. Piper and Elmer Albert Piper were both preachers and both Bible-saturated.

My father said several times to me that he felt his father could pick up and recite from memory any place in the New Testament that you started for him.

And I have several of my father’s Bibles. They are at places so densely marked they are hard to read.

It is an amazing thing what happens to a life that is utterly devoted to an objective reality outside itself. Periodically the experience is enjoyed of total self-forgetfulness in the wonder of that Other Reality.

One does not know one is having such an experience until afterward, because that’s what it is by definition—unself-conscious. These are the healthiest times. And those who enjoy them most are the healthiest people—when that Other Reality is the God of the Bible.

John Piper's dad and granddad.