Piper John - A godward heart : treasuring the God who loves you

As a longtime admirer of John Pipers powerful proclamation of the supreme-ness of Christ in all things, I found this collection of short devotions to be comforting, thought provoking, and disturbingall at the same time. Applying your understanding of the gospel to the real world has inescapable consequences. What you believe about the gospel determines the world you build. Here are, in a sense, John Pipers blueprints.

K IRK C AMERON , actor, writer, producer

Pastor John Piper has a way, through these devotions, of waking me up from spiritual slumber. God has used these meditations to open my eyes to truth that sets me free.

S HANE B ARNARD , recording artist

My thirsty heart has often been directed to streams of living water through the devotional writings of Pastor John Piper. A Godward Heart is a fresh invitation to seek the Lord, to sit at the feet of the Savior, to savor Him as your greatest treasure, and to find deep satisfaction for your soul as you drink from His well that never runs dry.

N ANCY L EIGH D EMOSS , author, Revive Our Hearts teacher/host

Desiring God
The Pleasures of God
The Dangerous Duty of Delight
Finally Alive
Future Grace
A Hunger for God
Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ
Whats the Difference?
Dont Waste Your Life
When I Dont Desire God
Fifty Reasons Why Jesus Came to Die
God Is the Gospel
What Jesus Demands from the World
When the Darkness Will Not Lift
Spectacular Sins
John Calvin and His Passion for the Majesty of God
This Momentary Marriage
A Sweet and Bitter Providence
Think
Bloodlines

A G ODWARD H EART
P UBLISHED BY M ULTNOMAH B OOKS
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Scripture quotations are taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked ( KJV ) are taken from the King James Version. Scripture quotations marked ( NASB ) are taken from the New American Standard Bible. Copyright The Lockman Foundation 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977. Used by permission. (www.Lockman.org). Scripture quotations marked ( NIV ) are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com.

Italics in Scripture quotations reflect the authors added emphasis.

Hardcover ISBN 978-1-60142-566-9
eBook ISBN 978-1-60142-567-6

Copyright 2014 by Desiring God Foundation

Cover design by Kristopher K. Orr; cover image by Robert McGouey, Corbis Images

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Published in the United States by WaterBrook Multnomah, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC, New York, a Penguin Random House Company.

M ULTNOMAH and its mountain colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Piper, John, 1946
A godward heart : treasuring the God who loves you / John Piper.FIRST EDITION.
pages cm
ISBN 978-1-60142-566-9 (hardback)ISBN 978-1-60142-567-6 (electronic)
1. Meditations. I. Title.
BV4832.3.P57 2014
242dc23

2013031510

v3.1

One of the reasons I put together collections of short meditations is that my life has been changed as much by paragraphs as by books. Books on one topic are valuable. They let the author explore all the angles of an insight. But where do the insights themselves come from? Usually they come from paragraphs. Even sentences. For reasons not entirely explainable, God can make a single paragraph life changing.

Perhaps some evening your soul is hungry. Not for anything in particular, just a soul-hunger. A longing. Something is needed beyond what television is going to give. Something about God, or about the meaning of your life, or about eternity. Youre tired and you know you probably cant stay awake to read twenty pages. So you pick up a book that you know focuses on eternal things, a Godward book. And three minutes later you have seen something, and you will never be the same again.

It may take a lifetime to sound the depths of what you just saw. But the seeing happens in an instant. Its as if God takes the paragraph in his fingers and uses it to adjust the lens on the eye of your soul, and something wonderful comes into focus that you had never seen before.

Isnt it amazing to think about the relationship between Gods focusing fingers and the human activity of writing and reading? You may have read that same paragraph before, perhaps just the other evening. But this time God put his fingers on it and turned the lens just one more focusing notch. What this means is that I should pray as a writer and you should pray as a reader. We should ask God to do this focusing.

I think of your reading and my writing as a kind of partnership in the pursuit of a Godward miracle. I write, you read, but God gives the sight. What we both want is this miracle of seeingseeing life-changing things about God and life and eternity.

In one of his letters the apostle Paul said, By reading you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ (Ephesians 3:4, authors translation). But was reading enough? A few sentences later he prayed that they may have strength to know the love of Christ (Ephesians 3:1819). Something more was needed than reading. Something from Godhe called it strength to know. Earlier he had prayed that the eyes of his readers hearts would be enlightened, that you may know (Ephesians 1:18). Something from God is neededin answer to prayer. This is what I meant when I said that God takes a human paragraph and puts his fingers on the lens of the eye of your soul. The slightest turn and we are made strong with sight. We are never the same again.

So I have written. And you are reading. And God is ready to act. My words are not Scripture. They are not infallible like Gods words. But my earnest aim in all I write is to be faithful to Gods written Word in the Bible. To point to God and his Son and his works and his ways. My aim is a Godward book in the hope that God will put his fingers on its paragraphs and turn the lens of the eye of your soul, ever so delicately, and bring glories into focus.

This is how God forms us into his image. Beholding the glory of the Lord, [we] are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another (2 Corinthians 3:18). This is our aim: From a Godward paragraph, to a sight of glory, to a Godward heart.

A very special word of thanks is due to David Mathis, executive editor at Desiring God. David helped me assemble these meditations from all the different places and times where I had written them. After I reworked them for this book, he provided his sharp theological, stylistic, and formatting eye to help me refine them for final release. I admire Davids gifts and love his friendship. Thank you, David, for your partnership.