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Jon Bloom

Jon Bloom serves as teacher and cofounder of Desiring God. He is author of three books, Not by Sight, Things Not Seen, and Don’t Follow Your Heart. He and his wife have five children and make their home in the Twin Cities.

God Will Guide-Even Correct-You When the Decisions are Hard

Mary wasn’t herself. Joseph had sensed some urgency in her request that he meet her at “their” tree. She was staring at the ground. She seemed burdened. “Mary, is something wrong?” She looked up at him intensely. “Joseph… I’m pregnant.”…

Hope for the Battle with Intractable Weakness

We all have sin-infected weaknesses that are intractable. They are deeply woven into the fabric of who we are and are frequently exacerbated by our sinful responses to them. Inherent weaknesses are different from indwelling sin. Indwelling sin is evil…

Is Your World Too Small?

Is Your World Too Small?

We live in a small world at high speed. And this way of living tends to produce spiritual barrenness rather than richness. That’s why G.K. Chesterton, ahead of his time, was sounding a warning more than a century ago. He said to get your microscopes back out.

Unbelief Is Sure to Err

Unbelief Is Sure to Err

Unbelief messes up how we calculate reality and leads us to errant conclusions and really bad decisions. After Jesus had raised Lazarus from the dead in John 11, the Jewish religious leaders realized they had a serious crisis on their…

Keep Speaking

It is precisely when it is personally costly to speak, and we *still* speak, that people listen to what we have to say. When it’s costly to deliver a message, the message must be costly. For people only pay dearly for what is valuable. Paying dearly glorifies the valuable thing.

Jesus chooses and Uses Failures

"Forgiven," Not "Failure," Defines the Christian

“Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Peter was grieved. Jesus had just asked him for the third time if he loved him. Peter had already wholeheartedly answered yes twice. What else was he supposed to say? Had he…

How Grace and Peace Is Multiplied to You

Every morning at 8:45 the Desiring God staff gathers for a 15-minute devotional. We read a small portion of Scripture, apply it to God’s call on us, and then pray for various outreach efforts, needs, and prayer requests. It’s our…

What You Teach Really, Really Matters

Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers. (1 Timothy 4:16) Do you have a communication gifting? Have others commented on how well…

Who Would Have Dreamed?

Who Would Have Dreamed?

This story is not of merely human origin. There is nothing like it in any other human religion or mythology: the Incarnation for the sake of atoning substitution for the sake of our redemption.

‘In Faithfulness You Have Afflicted Me’

‘In Faithfulness You Have Afflicted Me’

In his faithfulness, God promises not only that he will deliver us from affliction, but that we will do something good through the affliction.

The Home of the Brave

The Home of the Brave

The day Saul became a citizen in heaven he became homeless on earth. And Saul’s homelessness has proven to be one of the greatest gifts the world has received.

Come, Look Through This Telescope

Come, Look Through This Telescope

He gave . . . teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of…

Let Wonder Lead You to Worship (Don’t Let the Devil Dumb You)

How great are your works, O Lord! Your thoughts are very deep! The stupid man cannot know; the fool cannot understand this” (Psalm 92:5–6). The devil does not want you to wonder. Wonder is deadly to the domain of…

The Joseph Trilogy (Part 1)

A Painful Decision When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her …

When a Rock Sunk Slowly

The following story is drawn from Matthew 14:13–33 and John 6:1–21. The day had been another mind-blower for the disciples. As they rowed toward Capernaum it was hard to stop talking about what they had seen. Five thousand men, plus…

Piper and Edwards On Election (the Presidential One, I Mean)

The 57th U.S. presidential election is bearing down hard on us. Well-funded propaganda warships are shelling us from every media outlet. Dire consequences are prophesied if the wrong vision for America is elected to power. But here’s something that you…

Jesus & the Buddha on Happiness

Greatly disturbed by the suffering he saw in the world, 29-year-old Prince Gautama Siddhartha (563-483 BC), who was later called the Buddha (enlightened one), left his wife and young child and set out on a search for the meaning of…

There Must Be Factions

[Post updated.] I’m thankful for First Corinthians. It reminds me that the early church wasn’t only experiencing Acts 4:32-35. The church in Corinth was so divided that you might say it was diced. There were divisions over which apostle was…

You Are a Branch, Not a Vine

Defeating Pride by Cultivating Prayerful Dependence

Does Jesus’ metaphor here strike you as a bit odd? Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I…

Amazing Grace in the Wreckage of Adultery

In staff devotions recently we were in Proverbs 6. Solomon warns his son against the devastation of adultery. In verses 32-33 he writes He who commits adultery lacks sense; he who does it destroys himself. He will get wounds and…

What the Lilac Preached to Me

The man at Home Depot said I had to choose between having kids and having a yard. I have five kids. And our friends next door have five kids. Inner-city living means that most of the biking, digging, running, building…

No More Scarlet Letters

W. Somerset Maugham once said, “There is hardly anyone whose sexual life, if it were broadcast, would not fill the world at large with surprise and horror.” With networks and newspapers broadcasting another New York Congressman’s sordid sexual secrets, and…

The Gadarene: When Following Jesus Means Going Home

We tend to think of following Jesus as leaving behind the familiar for the unfamiliar. But sometimes, like the man in Luke 8:26-39, the more difficult call is to go back home. *** For the first time in a long…

Making Christmas Melancholy Point Hopeward

Each year Christmas night finds members of my family feeling melancholic. After weeks of anticipation, the Christmas celebrations have flashed by us and are suddenly gone. And we sit in the messy aftermath watching the taillights and music of another…

Beware the Peril that Lurks in Success

It happened, late one afternoon, when David arose from his couch and was walking on the roof of the king's house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; and the woman was very beautiful. (2 Samuel 11:2) We…

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