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Ask Pastor John

Questions and answers with John Piper

Look at the Book

Interactive Bible study with John Piper

Solid Joys

Daily devotional from John Piper

Light + Truth

Classic sermons from John Piper

Solid Joys

February 9

Better Than Money, Sex, and Power

Do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward.

Hebrews 10:35

We need to ponder the superiority of God as our great reward over all that the world has to offer. If we don’t, we will love the world like everyone else and live like everyone else.

So, take the things that drive the world, and ponder how much better and more abiding God is. Take money or sex or power and think about them in relation to death. Death will take away every one of them. If that is what you live for, you won’t get much, and what you get, you lose.

But God’s treasure is vastly superior, and it lasts. It goes beyond death. It’s better than money because God owns all the money and he is our Father. We are his heirs. “All [things] are yours, and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s” (1 Corinthians 3:22–23).

It’s better than sex. Jesus never had sexual relations, and he was the most full and complete human that ever will exist. Sex is a shadow — an image — of a greater reality, of a relationship and a pleasure that will make the most exquisite sex seem like a yawn.

The reward of God is better than power. There is no greater human power than to be a child of the almighty God. “Do you not know that we are to judge angels?” (1 Corinthians 6:3). “The one who conquers, I will grant him to sit with me on my throne, as I also conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne” (Revelation 3:21).

And so it goes on and on. Everything the world has to offer, God is better and more abiding.

There is no comparison. God wins — every time. The question is: Will we have him? Will we wake up from the trance of this stupefying world and see and believe and rejoice in and love what is truly real, and infinitely valuable, and everlasting?

Excerpt from

The Present Power of a Future Possession

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Saving Faith Isn’t Easily Satisfied

February 10•Hebrews 11:15–16

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Are You Glad You Are Not God?

February 8•Psalms 96:7

About Solid Joys

Solid Joys is a daily devotional written and read by John Piper. These short and substantive readings will feed your joy in Jesus every day of the year.

God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him

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