Watch John Piper (on C.S. Lewis, on William Tyndale) explain how the biblical gospel destroys morality, external conformity, and list-keeping religion:

For the first time in its history the Desiring God Conference for Pastors, which took place last week, was devoted to the subject of Christian Hedonism—the teaching that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.

In conjunction with the conference, it seemed good to revisit and remember some of those glad verses within the Psalter that command us to pursue our joy in God.

Delight yourself in the LORD; and He will give you the desires of your heart. (Psalm 37:4)

Be glad in the LORD and rejoice, you righteous ones; and shout for joy, all you who are upright in heart. (Psalm 32:11)

Sing for joy in the LORD, O you righteous ones; praise is becoming to the upright. (Psalm 33:1)

Let the nations be glad and sing for joy; for You will judge the peoples with uprightness and guide the nations on the earth. (Psalm 67:4)

Shout joyfully to the LORD, all the earth. Serve the LORD with gladness; come before Him with joyful singing. (Psalm 100:1)

For a fuller introduction to Christian Hedonism and its deep and broad biblical roots, I recommend checking out John Piper's Desiring God seminar (5 parts).

This video, directed by DG staffer Tristan Carnahan, was used to kick off the Pastors Conference this past Monday night.

The script comes straight from C. S. Lewis:

If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased. (The Weight of Glory, 26)

(Update: watch the video)

The manuscript and audio of John Piper's "Lessons from an Inconsolable Soul: Learning from the Mind and Heart of C. S. Lewis" are now up.

Towards the end of his message, Piper lists 8 lessons—apart from the major lesson on joy—that Lewis has taught him. They are, as titled,

1. Liberation from False Dichotomies
2. Liberation from Chronological Snobbery
3. The Wakening of Wonder at What Is Really There
4. The Perils of Introspection
5. The Incompleteness of Duty Without Delight
6. The Painful Value of Self-Knowledge
7. Story Is Great—But Not Everything
8. The Glory of Simply Being Human

This week's sermon: "I Will Build My Church"

Why plant new churches in America? You may be surprised by the statistics.

1. There are about 200 million non-churched people in America, making America one of the four largest “unchurched” nations in the world.
2. Each year about 3,500 churches close their doors permanently.
3. Today, of the approximately 350,000 churches in America, four out of five are either plateaued or declining.
4. One American denomination recently found that 80% of its converts came to Christ in churches less than two years old.

Each church has her weaknesses—and strengths. In planting new churches, we pray not for replications of already existing churches with all their weaknesses, but more and more of incarnations of biblical vision and gospel theology without the same limitations and imperfections. What the world needs is not the multiplication of our imperfections and limitations but new sets of imperfections and limitations. Multiplying churches with different strengths and weaknesses means coming closer to meeting the crying needs of the world.

Mark this well: Jesus does not promise that he will build his school, or that he will build his co-op, or build his medical clinic, or build his university, or build his social service agency—as good as those are. He promises with absolute authority: "I will build my church."

Each January John Piper prepares a brief annual report for Bethlehem summarizing the highlights from the previous year. His 2009 annual report is now online.

Now all of his annual reports since 1990 are available on the DG website.

From February 4 through March 17, I will be on my annual writing leave (with a couple speaking trips thrown in). Thank you for supporting me in these focused times away. They are not vacation. I usually work longer hours during writing leave than during regular ministry seasons.

So please pray for me that I would love my family well and that I would be very productive for the glory of Christ. Pray that I would devote more time to prayer, not less; that I would give more time to read and meditate on the Scriptures, not less; and pray that I would see beautiful truth in God’s word and be able to write about it in spiritually compelling ways. What will I work on?...

Read the rest of the article.

Along with the recent release of A Sweet and Bitter Providence comes Ruth: Under the Wings of God. This shorter book is a compilation of John Piper's 1995 advent poems, published in hardcover, with illustrations by Cory Godbey of Portland Studios.

John Piper says he wrote A Sweet and Bitter Providence because there is a way to suffer that honors Christ and glorifies God:

This week's sermon: "Born Blind for the Glory God: Eugenics by Abortion Is an Abomination to God"

Haiti happens every day in the world's abortion clinics, where 130,000 human lives are destroyed. In the United States 3,000 die daily, crushed in the earthquake of abortion (more than the 2,976 who died in the 9/11 attacks).

With the advent of widespread prenatal testing availability, a kind of "eugenics by abortion" is growing, as parents kill their disabled offspring at a horrific rate. As Wesley Smith writes, "Americans may heartily cheer participants in the Special Olympics, but we abort some 90 percent of all gestating infants diagnosed with genetic disabilities such as Down Syndrome, dwarfism, and spina bifida."

The Christian Bible has a message to speak: There is both forgiveness for those guilty of abortion and a whole new way of thinking about disability. God is the one who knits together humanity in the womb, and God has his good and perfect designs in every disability.

Jesus shows us that the man born blind in John 9 was disabled for the glory of God, for his own good, and for the good of countless others. Not only did Jesus physically heal him, but then he pursued him, to perform the ultimate healing: opening his spiritual eyes to see the glory of the Son of God.

In every disability and death, Jesus is at work, for his Father's glory and for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose (Romans 8:28).

1. Ask Pastor John Live-November 2009, Parts 1, 2, and 3
2. Media from Angola Prison, LA
   • Jesus Came Not to Give Bread, But to Be Bread
   • Questions and Answers
3. Piper's messages in Germany and Russia last October
4. Why Does Desiring God Offer Everything Online for Free?
5. Why I Abominate the Prosperity Gospel
6. Piper's 2008 Trinity Journal article, "I Believe in God's Self-Sufficiency"
7. Updated video for the Pleasures of God 2007 Regional Conference
8. Media from Evangelical Theological Society Annual Meetings:
   • 2006 - William Tyndale and the Vernacular Bible
   • 2008 - Why God Is Not a Megalomaniac in Demanding to Be Worshiped
   • 2009 - Evangelicals and A Common Word
9. Media from Together for the Gospel conferences:
   • Why Expositional Preaching is Particularly Glorifying to God (2006)
   • T4G 2006 Panel Discussion (2006)
• How the Supremacy of Christ Creates Radical Christian Sacrifice (2008)
• T4G 2008 Panel Discussion (2008)
10. Media from Ligonier National Conferences:
    • Let the Nations Be Glad (2000)
    • Counting It All Joy (2000)
    • Questions and Answers (2000)
    • Faith and Reason (2007)
    • The Challenge of Relativism (2007)
11. Campus Outreach's 2000 Atlanta Christmas Conference: "Desire of All Nations"
    • Our Desires and Their Fulfillment in Christ, Part 1
    • Our Desires and Their Fulfillment in Christ, Part 2
    • Others' Desires and Their Fulfillment in Christ
    • The Need for Christian Courage
    • College Men's Rally: Family, Fatherhood, and God
12. Passion 98:
    • Did Christ Die for Us or for God?
    • God Is Glorified in Us When Christ Is Gain to Us
    • Christian Hedonism with Questions and Answers - Leaders Seminar
13. Passion 97:
    • Building a God-Focused Ministry - Leaders Seminar

In his sermon a couple weeks ago on "Holding Fast the Word of Life in 2010," Pastor John modeled scripture memory by reciting the entire book of Philippians to his congregation.

Later in the sermon, however, Piper issued the warning that memorization alone doesn't guarantee spiritual life or growth to any of us. Satan himself could quote the Bible, just like he did when he tempted Jesus. What is needed is both God's word and his Holy Spirit, who works through that word to bring us spiritual power.

Here are two more examples of scripture memory by men we know here at DG, men who have labored diligently to store up God's word for their own and others' true spiritual good:

• Jon Bloom, Desiring God's Executive Director, recited the book of Hebrews as a sermon for his church.
• Sam Crabtree, Executive Pastor at Bethlehem and Desiring God board member, recited the Sermon on the Mount at Bethlehem's 2010 Fighter Verse Kickoff event.

For resources related to memorizing scripture, check out Bethlehem's Fighter Verse Program page or Fighterverses.com.

This week's sermon: "Help the Children Love the Different People"

God gives parents the privilege of being the primary shapers of their children¹s attitude to racial differences. According to Ephesians 6:1-4, both mom and dad are to be honored and obeyed by their children. This is God's good plan for our great good, and where this breaks down, everything begins to break down.

Fathers are named specifically in Ephesians 6:4 and have an especially prominent role in shaping the minds and hearts of their children in accord with the Lord¹s instruction. And part of that instruction is the Lord's truth about racial differences and how we should think and feel and act about them.

Here are 8 ways (among other possible ways) for moms and dads to help their children to love people who are different from them:

1. Help the children believe in God¹s sovereign wisdom and goodness in creating them with the body that they have.
   
   
2. Help the children believe in God's sovereign wisdom and goodness in making other people with the body that they have.
   
   
3. Help the children believe that they and all other children and adults are made in God's image.
   
   
4. Teach the children that God tells us to do to others as we would like others to do to us.
   
   
5. Teach the children and model for them that their own sin is uglier than anybody they think is physically unattractive.
   
   
6. Teach the children that God loves them in spite of the ugliness of their sin and that he proved this by sending his Son to die for our sins and give forgiveness to all who would trust him.
   
   
7. Teach the children that because Jesus died for them and rose again, he becomes for them an all-satisfying Friend and Treasure.
   
   
8. Teach the children to love others who are different from them, not in order to be accepted by God, but because they already are accepted by God because of Jesus.

It is the power of God in the gospel that is the power to love people different from ourselves. This is the key we give to our children, and the key to daily life as parents.

This week's sermon: "Holding Fast the Word of Life in 2010"

The Bible is not magic. It holds no guarantee that reading it will produce spiritual life and health and growth. But this much is guaranteed: There won't be spiritual life and health and growth without God's word.

The sovereign God gives his grace by his Spirit as he wills, and he does so through his word. Without receiving his word, we starve every grace that God means for us to thrive on his world.

Join us in our longing and prayer to give ourselves to the word of God in 2010.

In November, John Piper spoke at Angola Prison in Louisiana. That message and the follow-up Q & A are now available to watch or listen to.

• Jesus Came Not to Give Bread, but to Be Bread
• Q & A

We're excited to see many of you at our upcoming Conference for Pastors. We pray that Jesus will be exalted and that you will be strengthened as we consider The Pastor, the People, and the Pursuit of Joy: The Apostolic Aim of Pastoral Ministry.

In an effort to help you prepare for the conference, here are a few recommended resources for you to use and enjoy.

Free Content from our Website:

1. The Pastor as Father to His Family and Flock
2. Advice to Pastors: How to Help Your people Be More Satisfied in God
3. Advice to Pastors: Preach the Word
4. A Pastor’s Offering to God of Holy People
5. Top 10 Things to Look Forward to at the Pastors Conference
6. Brothers, Save the Saints
7. Brothers, Beware of Sacred Substitutes
8. Loving God for Who he Is: A Pastor’s Perspective
9. God’s Word, Good Exposition, Great Joy, Much Strength
10. APJ: How should a Pastor decide what to preach?
11. The Glory of Pervasive Holiness in the Life of a Pastor
12. Certainties that Drive Enduring Ministry (Ch 4 in Stand: A Call for the Endurance of the Saints by John MacArthur)
13. Scripture: Kindling for Christian Hedonism (Ch 5 in Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist)

Related Books:

1. Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor: the Life and Reflections of Tom Carson (D.A. Carson)
2. Feed My Sheep: A Passionate Plea for Preaching (Don Kistler)
3. The Reformed Pastor (Richard Baxter)
4. The Living Church (John Stott)
5. The Supremacy of God in Preaching (John Piper)

Related Resources:

1. A Charge to New Testament Church Leaders, Part 1 (John MacArthur)
2. A Charge to New Testament Church Leaders, Part 2 (John MacArthur)
3. The Rebel’s Guide to Joy (Mark Driscoll)
4. Humble Pastors (Mark Driscoll)

John Piper on C.S. Lewis:

1. Book Review: A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C.S. Lewis
2. 5 Tips for Clear Writing and Talking
3. Weighty Words on the Meaning of a Husband’s Headship
4. How Willingly Do People Go to Hell?
5. The Sorrows of Fathers and Sons
6. You Shall Worship the Lord Your God
7. Do People Bore You?
8. Do You Benefit From Reading Authors That You Don’t Agree With?
9. The Child To Be Born Will Be Called Holy--the Son of God
10. Hell Never Produced a Single Pleasure
11. Worship: The Feast of Christian Hedonism
12. Treating Delight As Duty Is Controversial
13. Lewis and Edwards on the Layers of Self-Admiration
14. Further Up and Further In
15. John Piper Is Not an Innovator
16. Seneca, C.S. Lewis, and a Sale
17. Kids’ Books for Grown-Ups
18. Lent Preparations for Good Friday and Easter
19. Thank God for Famous Faith
20. An Open Letter to Michael Prowse

You can now watch or listen to the two messages that John Piper gave at Campus Crusade's conference here in Minneapolis on December 30 and 31:

• God's Passion for His Glory
• Holy Ambition: Paul's and Yours
  

John Piper's brand new book A Sweet and Bitter Providence is an exploration of the book of Ruth. In the introduction, he writes,

I don't know you or your circumstances well enough to to say for sure that you should read this book.... [L]et me simply tell you why I think you might be helped if you join me in listening to the message of Ruth.

He lists 7 reasons:

1. Ruth is the Word of God.

[T]he message of Ruth is unwaveringly true. It's a rock to stand on when the terrain of ideas feels like quicksand. It's an anchor to hold us when tides are ripping....

The message of Ruth is filled with God-inspired hope.

2. Ruth is a love story.

The way Ruth and Boaz find each other is the stuff of epics.... But the story is the flesh-and-blood experience of one family living the unexpected plan of God.

3. Ruth is a portrait of beautiful, noble manhood and womanhood.

In a day when movies and television and advertising and the Internet portray masculinity and femininity in the lowest ways, we are in great need of stories that elevate the magnificent meaning of manhood and womanhood....

Ruth and Boaz are extraordinary. Men and women today need heroes like this.

4. Ruth address racial and ethnic diversity and harmony.

Ruth is an "unclean" pagan Moabitess. But she is drawn into faith and into the lineage of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Her marriage is an interracial marriage. There are lessons here that we need as much as ever today.

5. Ruth displays the sovereignty of God.

Is God's bitter providence the last word?... Everywhere I look in the world today, whether near or far, the issue for real people in real life is, Can I trust and love the God who has dealt me this painful hand in life? That is the question the book of Ruth intends to answer.

6. Ruth displays radical acts of risk-taking love.

[The book of Ruth is in the Bible] to make you a new kind of person—a person who is able "to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God" (Micah 6:8).

7. Ruth displays the glory of Christ.

[A] thousand years before Christ, this book glorifies his saving work on the cross, as we will see. Ruth is about the work of God in the darkest times to prepare the world for the glories ot Jesus Christ.

This week's sermon: "Praying in the Closet and in the Spirit"

Are you the disciplined type? Are you more spontaneous? What does the Bible say about how this relates to prayer?

This much is clear: Our various disciplines and spontaneities are Christian to the extent that they are an overflow of our confidence that God is already 100% on our side.

The gospel doesn't rule out spontaneity. "In the Spirit," Jesus' gospel-work for us often moves us to spontaneous prayer.

And the gospel doesn't rule our discipline. It moves us to plan for prayer "in the closet," and to take up various intentional disciplines as fruit of the gospel.

Faith in the gospel leads the Christian to planned private prayer in at least 3 ways:

1. Because we trust in Jesus as our Lord and know he is for us, we gladly do what he tells us.
2. Because we trust in Jesus as our Treasure, we have tasted and seen that he is good, and so we are eager to get more of him.
3. Because we trust in Jesus as our Savior, we know that every true need we have has been purchased for us already, and so we don't come to him in prayer to purchase but to receive.

John Piper will be speaking tomorrow and Thursday at Campus Crusade's TCX 2009 conference. We will be live-streaming both messages.

• Wednesday, December 30, 7:45 PM CT
  "God's Passion for His Glory"
• Thursday, December 31, 7:15 PM CT
  "Holy Ambition: Paul's and Yours"

A couple of years ago, Rick Steen, a military chaplain and friend of DG, received copies of Don’t Waste Your Life to give to members of the military. Recently, he was assigned to the National Science Foundation base in Antarctica where he distributed his last copies! 

He’s also sending a copy to the library at the South Pole. As Rick wrote to us, “I think it is safe to say that “Don’t Waste Your Life” has made it to every continent!”

Pictured below are some of the men who received a copy. Thank you, Lord, for giving us passionate spreaders! 

John Piper's new book A Sweet and Bitter Providence is now available. In it, Piper explores the themes of sex and race that are so prominent in Ruth's story. And then, most importantly, he looks at how God is graciously in control of circumstances no matter how bitter they are.

This week’s sermon: “You Have the Words of Eternal Life”

Christmas is all about Good Friday. The reason the eternal Word became flesh (John 1:14) is that he needed flesh to suffer and die. God becoming man is the only way that grace could come to sinners. The gospel is the great message of Christmas.

John 6 is a rough chapter. It begins with 5,000 following Jesus, and ends with only 11. But there are rays of hope.

One ray is verse 63 where Jesus says, “The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.” The second ray is Peter, who when asked if he would go away with the 5,000, responds in verse 68, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”

His answer implies that he had considered going elsewhere. Jesus’ words to the crowds were tough. But Peter had been gripped by the Holy Spirit. He had been given life in Jesus’ words. And though numerous questions remained, he knew there was no one like this Jesus and no words of eternal life like he spoke.

1. The Life-Giving Voice of the Son of God (Spanish)
   La Voz del Hijo de Dios Da Vida
2. The New Birth Produces Love (Spanish)
   El Nuevo Nacimiento Produce Amor
3. All Things for Good, Part 3 (Spanish)
   Todas Las Cosas Para Bien, Parte 3
4. Slaves to God, Sanctification, Eternal Life (Spanish)
   Siervos de Dios, Santificación, Vida Eterna
5. Jesus Christ and the Law of God (Spanish)
   Jesucristo Y La Ley De Dios
6. No Condemnation in Christ Jesus, Part 2 (Spanish)
   No Hay Condenación en Cristo Jesús, Parte 2
7. Subjected to Futility in Hope, Part 1 (Spanish)
   Sujetos a Vanidad en la Esperanza, Parte 1
8. Subjected to Futility in Hope, Part 2 (Spanish)
   Sujetos a Vanidad en la Esperanza, Parte 2
9. It Is God Who Justifies! (Spanish)
   ¡Dios Es el Que Justifica!
10. Dead to the Law, Serving in the Spirit, Part 4 (Spanish)
    Muertos a la Ley, Sirviendo en el Espíritu, Parte 4
11. United with Christ in Death and Life, Part 2 (Spanish)
    Unidos a Cristo en la Muerte y en la Vida, Parte 2
12. Ask Your Father in Heaven (Spanish)
    Pidan A Su Padre Celestial
13. "All Flesh Will Come and Worship" (Spanish)
    “Vendrán Todos A Adorar”