Piper - Desiring God: meditations of a Christian hedonist

D ESIRING G OD , R EVISED E DITION
P UBLISHED BY M ULTNOMAH B OOKS
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Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked ( NASB ) are taken from the New American Standard Bible 1960, 1977, 1995 by the Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. Scripture quotations marked ( RSV ) are taken from the Revised Standard Version Bible 1946, 1952 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Scripture quotations marked ( KJV ) are taken from the King James Version.

Italics added in Scripture are the authors emphasis.

eISBN: 978-1-60142-391-7

Copyright 1986, 1996, 2003, 2011 by Desiring God Foundation

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 Inc., New York.

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

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Piper, John, 1946
Desiring God / revised and expanded by John Piper.
p. cm.
1. GodWorship and love. 2. Desire for God. 3. HappinessReligious aspectsChristianity.
4. Praise of God. I. Title.
BV4817.P56 2003
248.4dc19 2002154750

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Twenty-five years ago
I dedicated this book
to my father,

W ILLIAM S OLOMON H OTTLE P IPER .

The sweet indebtedness I still feel to him
is now only intensified
by the joy of knowing that today
his happiness is sinless
in the presence of Christ.

There is a kind of happiness and wonder that makes you serious.

C. S. L EWIS

The Last Battle

T his is a serious book about being happy in God. Its about happiness because that is what our Creator commands: Delight yourself in the L ORD (Psalm 37:4). And it is serious because, as Jeremy Taylor said, God threatens terrible things if we will not be happy.

The heroes of this book are Jesus, who endured the cross for the joy that was set before him; and the apostle Paul, who was sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; and Jonathan Edwards, who deeply savored the sweet sovereignty of God; and C. S. Lewis, who knew that the Lord finds our desires not too strong but too weak; and all the missionaries who have left everything for Jesus and in the end said, I never made a sacrifice.

Twenty-five years have passed since Desiring God first appeared in 1986. The significance of a truth is judged in part by whether over time it has transforming power in very different circumstances. What about the message of this book? Its context today is dramatically different from when it was first published.

Things have changed personally and culturally. Since its first edition, my body and mind have passed from being forty years old to being sixty-five years old. My marriage advanced from a seventeen-year-old marriage to a forty-two-year-old marriage. My pastorate at Bethlehem Baptist Church has extended from six years to thirty-one years. My sons have grown through their single teen years into married adulthood, and they have made me a grandfather twelve times over. In 1986 there were no daughters. Now there is Talitha Ruth, whose motto at fifteen is a girl should get so lost in God, that a guy has to seek Him to find her.

Culturally the world is a different place. Consider some of the events: Tiananmen Square, the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Rwandan genocide, Columbine High School, the global AIDS pandemic, Y2K, 9/11, the rise of jihadist terrorism, the ceaseless Middle East wars, tsunamis, the historic Obama presidency. Or consider the transformation of popular culture by developments that were not prominent before 1986: laptops, smart phones, debit cards, DVDs, iPods, pay-at-the-pump gasoline, digital cameras, PowerPoint, Purell, Viagra, flat-screen TVs, public use of the Internet, blogging, Web commerce, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and a ceaseless rush of computer-related innovations.

In other words, things have changed. This is the world I live in with profound appreciation and serious concern. But, as personally astute and as culturally awake as I try to be, what seems plain to me is that the really important, deep, and lasting things in life have not changed. And therefore my commitment to the message of this book has not changed. The truth that I unfold here is my life. That God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him continues to be a spectacular and precious truth in my mind and heart. It has sustained me into my seventh decade of life, and I do not doubt that, because of Jesus, it will carry me Home.

Along the way, I added a chapter called Suffering: The Sacrifice of Christian Hedonism. The reason was partly biblical, partly global, and partly autobiographical. Biblically, it is plain that God has appointed suffering for all His children. Through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God (Acts 14:22). Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted (2 Timothy 3:12).

Globally, it is increasingly plain that a bold stand for the uniqueness of Christ crucified, not to mention the finishing of the Great Commission among hostile peoples, will cost the church suffering and martyrs. The post-9/11 world has been troubled with terrorism and war. If the message of this book is to have any credibility, it must give an account of itself in this world of fear and suffering. Increasingly I am drawn to the apostles experience described in the words sorrowful, yet always rejoicing (2 Corinthians 6:10).

Autobiographically, the years since the first edition of Desiring God have been the hardest. One of the older women of our church quipped to us at our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, The first twenty-five are the hardest. We have not found it to be so. We are nearing the end of the second twenty-five, and undoubtedly they have been the hardest.

The body ages and things go wrong. Marriage, we found, passes through deep water as husband and wife pass through midlife and beyond. We made it. But we will not diminish the disquietude of those years. We were not ashamed to seek help. God has been good to usmuch more kind than we deserve. As we ended our fourth decade of marriage, I thought I might be far enough along to write a seasoned book on marriage. It is called This Momentary Marriage: A Parable of Permanence. The paradox of that title is at the root of what we have learned. Now, moving through our seventh decade of life and our fifth decade of marriage, the roots are deep, the covenant is solid, the love is sweet. Life is hard, and God is good.

The other marriage in my life (with Bethlehem Baptist Church) has been a mingling of sweetness and sorrow. As I sit here pondering the years, the sweetness so outweighs the sorrow that I have no desire to dwell on the pain. It was all in Gods good planfor us and for the people. The apostle Paul spoke a deep pastoral reality when he said, If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation (2 Corinthians 1:6). But there is a joy without which pastors cannot profit their people (Hebrews 13:17). Mercifully, God has preserved it for thirty-one years. And the truth of this book has been His means.