10 Benefits of Reading the Bible: Part 1
Ask God to give you eyes to see the worth of Scripture and to waken in you an unyielding desire for the Word of God.
Articles by John Piper
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What Must Happen before Jesus Returns?
We do not know how much time must elapse before Jesus comes. We err to say otherwise. But we may err in the other direction as well—presuming to think that he must not be near.
Jesus Said More about Hell Than Anyone in the Bible
The word wrath is important for understanding what Jesus meant by hell. Hell is not simply the natural consequence of rejecting God.
If We Were Created for God's Glory, Is God Merely Using Us?
Life is wasted when we do not live for the glory of God. All of life, all for his glory.
Why the Call to Preach Is Unique
Expository exultation is a unique kind of communication. It is different, radically different, from anything in the world.
We have much to learn from the apostle who had the ability to be blunt and corrective while striving toward peace with others in kindness.
Christ suffered and died with purpose. Learn why.
15 Popular Passages from ‘Don’t Waste Your Life’
Read through some of the most-highlighted passages of John Piper's best-selling book.
Why Jesus Warns Us to Be Alert for His Second Coming
The appearing of Christ becomes a sudden trap not because it could happen any moment, but because the spiritually unseeing will be blind to Christ’s coming.
Jesus is not commending hypocritical prayer. He is not calling for show-prayer. He is calling for real prayer, that is, real Godward desire for the good of our enemy.
How the Word of God Enables Us to Defeat the Devil
When the powers of darkness are arrayed against you, and aim to destroy your joy forever, nothing is more precious than to have the Word of God ready for the battle.
Coronavirus and the Second Coming of Christ
Even though the history of the Christian church is littered with failed predictions of the end of the world, it remains true that Jesus Christ is coming back.
The term sovereignty does not contain the idea of purposeful action, but the term providence does.
Where Christ Isn’t Being Treasured, He’s Being Used
Christ as a treasure is not a slice of Christ. It is every dimension of Christ—all of Christ—making up the totality of his infinite value.
The Role of Prayer and Missions in Salvation
Prayer and evangelism are both part of the plan—the all-embracing, all-pervasive, unstoppable providence of God is the only hope for making our efforts effective.
The star is doing something that it cannot do on its own: it is guiding magi to the Son of God to worship him.
Practically, How Do We Abide in Jesus?
Jesus commands that we go on repenting, coming, believing, loving, and listening. The transformation of repentance continues. Coming to Jesus again and again continues.
What Does the New Testament Mean That Jesus Will Come Soon?
What would it mean for an infallible spokesman (an apostle!) of the Lord Jesus, who cannot predict the time, to say that Jesus is coming soon?
How to Pray with the End Times in Mind
Closely connected to end-time gatherings for the sake of encouraging each other not to grow cold in love, but to persevere in faith, is the summons to end-time praying.
How Do I Follow Jesus When He Is Not Here?
Jesus knew that he would not always be on earth, so the command that we follow him was relevant not only for his physical days on earth but for all time.
Bible Reading That Satan Leaves Alone
Reading the Bible for wrong, selfish, or insincere reasons is not a threat to Satan.
The Key to Not Grumbling in Suffering
It seems to me that suffering without grumbling is one of the world's rarities.
What Is Christ to Us If He Is Not Our All-Satisfying Treasure?
The aim of God’s work in redemption is not that through Christ we might have salvation, but that through salvation we might have Christ—the all-satisfying treasure.
The Unbiblical Pursuit of a Trouble-Free Life
How can we keep on loving and serving people when life has so much pain and disappointment? What are the roots of endurance?
How to Pray in Times of Physical Pain
Father in heaven, in spite of all our uncertainties and all our embattled anxieties and all our discomfort, we say, great is the Lord and greatly to be praised.
What the Grand Canyon Teaches Us about Ourselves
Ninety-nine years ago today, Grand Canyon National Park was established after President Woodrow Wilson signed a Congressional act. Learn the invaluable lesson John Piper thinks this national landmark can teach.
We Read the Bible to Commune with God
We know God for who he is, and meet him as he is, when we meet him through his word—the Bible.
6 Habits of Heart and Mind for Lifelong Learners
Lifelong learning for the glory of Christ calls for continual growth in six habits of mind and heart. We seek to instill these habits in our students so that their education does not stop when their schooling stops.
Help for Humanly Impossible Acts
The languishing come to drink at the fountain of God’s life-giving word. That too is worship. It magnifies the necessity and desirableness of God.
How a Familiar Truth Forever Changed Hudson Taylor
We have all had experiences where the same truth we have read a hundred times explodes with new power in our lives. That happened for Hudson Taylor on September 4, 1869.
Good Bible Reading Requires Humility
The first step in reading the Bible in the power of another is to begin with humility. It begins with the renunciation of pride.
7 Reasons Why You Should Study the Book of Ruth
Ruth is a very old book. The events took place over three thousand years ago. Could it be relevant and helpful for your life? I think so.
This Day in History: The Death of Hudson Taylor
Today marks the 113th anniversary of the death of Hudson Taylor, missionary to China. His legacy of faithfulness lives on.
10 Benefits of Reading the Bible: Part 2
Part 2 of 10 Benefits of Reading the Bible.
If Christ came to die so that when you do sin, there is a propitiation, a removal of God’s wrath, then what does this imply for living your life? Three things.
The Intersection of the Natural and the Supernatural in Preaching
How do the supernatural and the natural intersect in the act of preaching?
How C. S. Lewis Awakened John Piper to the ‘Realness’ of Life
Lewis made me more alive to beauty. He put my soul on notice that there are daily wonders that will waken worship if I open my eyes.
What Did Jesus Teach about Giving Generously?
The reason money is so crucial for Jesus is that across all cultures and all ages it represents the alternative to God as the treasure of our hearts, and therefore the object of our worship.
The highest meaning and the most ultimate purpose of marriage is to put the covenant relationship of Christ and his church on display.
6 Truths that Will Lead You to True Joy
God made us to magnify his greatness—the way telescopes magnify stars.
How to Find God's Signature in the Bible
The Scriptures themselves are God's signature—they bear witness to his glory.
What Does Jesus Want This Christmas?
What does Jesus want this Christmas? We can see the answer in his prayers.
The Relationship between Saving Faith and God-Pleasing Works
Paul underlines repeatedly the crucial and powerful relationship between faith and the good works of love.
How Charles Spurgeon Learned to Preach through a Broken Heart
When the heart is overwhelmed, it’s one thing to survive adversity; it is something entirely different to continue preaching Sunday after Sunday, month after month.
The Most Important Lessons John Piper Learned from His Dad
Where did I learn that delight in God is our highest duty? Before I encountered Jonathan Edwards and C. S. Lewis and Daniel Fuller, there was my father, Bill Piper.
Many unmarried people have strengthened their hands with the truth that no one has left anything for the sake of the kingdom, says the Lord Jesus, who will not receive back far more.
The reason God became man was to die. As God pure and simple, he could not die for sinners. But as man he could. His aim was to die.
The Most Shocking Story We've Ever Heard
You will never find anything so shocking, so strange, so weird and spellbinding as the story of the incarnation of the Son of God.
When the eternal Son of God became flesh and dwelt among us, he crossed an infinite chasm.
Is There Such a Thing as Race?
It is a healthy sign to wish that the term “race” did not exist. It has not served well to enhance human relations.
The Conversion and Execution of Tokichi Ishii
An example of the power of God’s word to awaken well-grounded faith, even if the believer does not know how to describe what has happened.
Missionaries Come from People Like You
God is closing in on some of you. He is like the “Hound of Heaven” who means to make you far happier in some dangerous and dirty work. Missionaries and ministers of mercy don’t come from nowhere.
The Fruits of Suffering in the Life of John Bunyan
In 1655, when the matter of his soul was settled, John Bunyan was asked to exhort the church, and suddenly a great preacher was discovered.
John Piper shares a helpful guide for how to pray over the Word in the fight for joy.
You Live in a God-Entranced World
The world is not a machine that God made to run on its own. It is a painting, or a sculpture, or a drama.
John Piper’s Prayer for the COVID-19 Pandemic
Grant recovery. Grant a cure. Deliver us—your poor, helpless creatures—from these sorrows, we pray.
Help! I’m Struggling to Accept the Bible’s Teaching on Men and Women
The Bible reveals the nature of masculinity and femininity by describing diverse responsibilities for man and woman while rooting these differing responsibilities in creation, not convention.
Christmas is about the coming of Christ into the world.
Why Gifts of Gold, Frankincense, and Myrrh?
God is not served by human hands as though he needed anything. The gifts of the magi are not given by way of assistance or need meeting.
Have You Ever (Really) Read the Bible?
True understanding of Scripture comes when we set aside our earthly and sinful desires and instead seek God's glory.
Calvinism, Hyper-Calvinism, and World Missions
A man’s inability to believe removes his responsibility to believe (and our duty to command people to believe).
Jesus has come to inaugurate that peace among God’s people and to unveil the true joy of Christmas.
The wasted life is the life without a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples.
Admitting Imperfections and Turning Them for Love
In spite of having such a privileged role in the early church, Paul did not try to pull rank by hiding his weaknesses or his sins.
Is Jesus Worth Following at Any Cost?
Are you ready to receive him and believe in him as your supreme treasure, even if it costs you the loss of your family and your life?
Are Complementarians Guilty of Selective Literalism?
Aren’t complementarians guilty of a selective literalism when they say some commands in a text are permanently valid and others are culturally conditioned and not absolute?
How to Eat with Gratitude This Thanksgiving
The created world finds its meaning when people, created in God’s image, use it with a mind that knows God and a heart that believes in and thanks God.
My view of the Bible was always a view through the Bible.
God’s Calling for George Müeller
When Müller was twenty years old, he was invited to a Bible study and, by the grace of God, felt the desire to go.
God’s Passion for God at Christmas
The deepest reason why we live for the glory of God is that God acts for the glory of God.
Is Complementarianism Oppressive to Women?
Exegetical support for why we believe Scripture teaches that headship includes primary leadership, which is the responsibility of the man.
Andrew Fuller: A Mind for Modern Missions
It is totally possible that Andrew Fuller’s impact on history, by the time Jesus returns, will be far greater and different than it is now.
Praying for Fullness this Christmas
Paul prays that we would experience Christ’s fullness—not just know about it, but be filled with it.
Fasting = Homesickness for God
Christian fasting is not only the spontaneous effect of a superior satisfaction in God; it is also a chosen weapon against every force in the world that would take that satisfaction away.
Turning High Thoughts to the Help of the Lowly
Paul loved God and people. His love for God summoned him ever higher into God’s revealed glory, and his love for people summoned him alongside ordinary folks.
Christmas marked the beginning of God’s most successful setback.
How Christmas Cuts History in Half
We often think of prophecy as relating to what is yet future or to what is now beginning to happen in the world, forgetting that what is past for us was future for the prophets.
The Strategic Righteousness of Ruth
The question that Ruth 3 answers is, What do a God-saturated man, a God-dependent young woman, and a God-exalting older woman do when they are filled with hope in the sovereign goodness of God?
Grace: The Dominant Note of Christmas
God the Son, who is God, and who is with God, came to reveal God in a way he had never been revealed before.
One of the most prominent burdens felt by society and church in the early 20th Century was the plight of orphans.
Jesus was forceful about the issue of ethnocentrism, the conviction or the feeling that one’s own ethnic group should be treated as superior or privileged.
Why You Should Read John Owen Next Year
What Owen offers is not quick relief, but long-term, deep growth in grace that can make strong, healthy trees where there was once a fragile sapling.
One day the ruler—the King of kings and Lord of lords—will return and make peace a reality.
Reading the Bible Gathers a Family from Every Tribe and Tongue
Without the Bible, there would be no ingathering of God’s people, and without the Bible, there would be no beautification of the bride. So everyone who enters the people of God by faith comes by the word.
Look at the Jesus of the Bible. Look at him. Don’t close your eyes and hope for a word of confirmation. Keep your eyes open and fill them with the full portrait of Jesus provided in the Bible.
The Measure of God's Love (Toward Those Worse Off Than Frogs)
The measure of God’s love for us is shown by two things. One is the degree of his sacrifice in saving us from the penalty of our sin. The other is the degree of unworthiness that we had when he saved us.
How the Great Commission Gets Done
John Piper reflects on the Great Commission.
The gospel of Jesus cuts the nerve of hatred and anger and the bent to be a blaming person.
Learning to Treasure Christ by Enjoying His Gifts
I don't know of a modern evangelical who has thought and written more biblically, more deeply, more creatively, or more practically about the proper enjoyment of creation and culture than Joe Rigney.
Do Not be Paralyzed by Your Weaknesses
In honor of Reformation Day this week, here's a practical post about "gutsy guilt" in Martin Luther.
Why You Should Read A Sweet and Bitter Providence
John Piper lists seven reasons why we should join him in listening to the message of Ruth.
Human Thinking & Divine Revealing Work Together To Awaken Saving Faith
John Piper shares six observations that clarify how human thinking and divine revealing work together in awakening saving faith.
Sex, Strategic Righteousness, and Eternal Purposes
John Piper calls us to not be like the world, but to instead to be like Boaz and Ruth.
A Word to Wives Who Desire Husbands to Lead Spiritually
Wives cannot demand that their husbands take leadership.
Grace: The Dominant Note of Christmas
God the Son, who is God, and who is with God, came to reveal God in a way he had never been revealed before.