Top 502 Quotes & Sayings by John Piper - Page 2

I want to learn from everybody.

It's amazing how many introverts go into the ministry.

You do the hundreds of things that a Christward heart does in the hope that God will put a match to those little sparks to cause it to become a conflagration in a community or in a nation.

Few things give rise to imprecise rhetoric like the issue of race. It's understandable, but damaging.

The saving love of God is his doing whatever must be done, at great cost to himself, and for the least deserving, so that he might enthrall them with what will make them supremely happy forever, namely, himself.

As much as we can, let's defend the truth by pointing to what the apostles taught, and let's call out sin by pointing to the inconsistencies between what we say we believe and what we do.

God gives life and he takes life. Everybody who dies, dies because God wills that they die.

Human beings were put on the planet to depend upon their Creator and to worship their Creator at every point in every sphere of culture.

Life is in God's hand.

God is not beholden to us at all. He doesn't owe us anything.

You may be going through things right now that are painfully preparing you for some precious service to Jesus and to his people. When a person strikes rock bottom with a sense of nothingness or helplessness, he may find that he has struck the Rock of Ages

Bitterness about your parents’ brokenness will kill you. Be the grace-filled end of generational sin in your family.

A Christian is not a person who believes in his head the teachings of the Bible. Satan believes in his head the teachings of the Bible! A Christian is a person who has died with Christ, whose stiff neck has been broken, whose brazen forehead has been shattered, whose stony heart has been crushed, whose pride has been slain, and whose life is now mastered by Jesus Christ.

Life is wasted if we do not grasp the glory of the cross, cherish it for the treasure that it is, and cleave to it as the highest price of every pleasure and the deepest comfort in every pain. What was once foolishness to us—a crucified God—must become our wisdom and our power and our only boast in this world.

Whenever your heart starts to be anxious about the future, preach to your heart and say, 'Heart, who do you think you are to be afraid of the future and nullify the promise of God? No, heart, I will not exalt myself with anxiety. I will humble myself in peace and joy as I trust this precious and great promise of God - He cares for me.'

What is sin? It is the glory of God not honored. The holiness of God not reverenced. The greatness of God not admired. The power of God not praised. The truth of God not sought. The wisdom of God not esteemed. The beauty of God not treasured. The goodness of God not savored. The faithfulness of God not trusted. The commandments of God not obeyed. The justice of God not respected. The wrath of God not feared. The grace of God not cherished. The presence of God not prized. The person of God not loved. That is sin.

Life is too short, too precious, too painful to waste on worldly bubbles that burst

Our deeds are not the basis of our salvation, they are the evidence of our salvation. They are not foundation, they are demonstration.

Don't ever think that the sin of your past means there is no hope for your future.

O, God of wonder, enlarge my capacity to be amazed at what is amazing, and end my attraction to the insignificant.

Wimpy worldviews make wimpy Christians. And wimpy Christians won’t survive the days ahead.

Life is precarious, and life is precious. Don't presume you will have it tomorrow, and don't waste it today.

Prayer causes things to happen that wouldn't happen if you didn't pray.

The strength of patience hangs on our capacity to believe that God is up to something good for us in all our delays and detours.

If God's love for his children is to be measured by our health, wealth, and comfort in this life, God hated the apostle Paul.

If you are sufficient for your task, it's too small.

Prayer is the open admission that without Christ we can do nothing. And prayer is the turning away from ourselves to God in the confidence that He will provide the help we need. Prayer humbles us as needy and exalts God as wealthy

The wisdom of God devised a way for the love of God to deliver sinners from the wrath of God while not compromising the righteousness of God.

God seldom calls us for an easier life, but always calls us to know more of him and drink more deeply of His sustaining grace.

One of the great enemies of hope is forgetting God's promises.

Life is not a straight line leading from one blessing to the next and then finally to heaven. Life is a winding and troubled road. Switchback after switchback. And the point of biblical stories like Joseph and Job and Esther and Ruth is to help us feel in our bones (not just know in our heads) that God is for us in all these strange turns. God is not just showing up after the trouble and cleaning it up. He is plotting the course and managing the troubles with far-reaching purposes for our good and for the glory of Jesus Christ.

People don't enjoy salt. They enjoy what is salted. We are the salt of the earth. We do not exist for ourselves.

If you can't see the sun you will be impressed with a street light. If you've never felt thunder and lightning you'll be impressed with fireworks. And if you turn your back on the greatness and majesty of God you'll fall in love with a world of shadows and short-lived pleasures.

You get one pass at life. That’s all. Only one. And the lasting measure of that life is Jesus Christ.

Prosperity cannot be a proof of God's favor, since it is what the devil promises to those who worship him. (Matt. 4:9)

Not going to God because your faith is weak is like not going to the doctor because you feel sick.

The deepest and most enduring happiness is found only in God. Not from God, but in God.

Do not be more devoted to your own brain than you are to the Bible.

Your mind was made to know and love God.

Christ did not die to forgive sinners who go on treasuring anything above seeing and savoring God. And people who would be happy in heaven if Christ were not there, will not be there. The gospel is not a way to get people to heaven; it is a way to get people to God. It's a way of overcoming every obstacle to everlasting joy in God. If we don't want God above all things, we have not been converted by the gospel.

Sleep is a daily reminder from God that we are not God. Once a day God sends us to bed like patients with a sickness. The sickness is a chronic tendency to think we are in control and that our work is indispensable. To cure us of this disease God turns us into helpless sacks of sand once a day.

The ultimate difference between God's wisdom and man's wisdom is how they relate to the glory of God's grace in Christ crucified. God's wisdom makes the glory of God's grace our supreme treasure. But man's wisdom delights in seeing himself as resourceful, self-sufficient, self determining, and not utterly dependent on God's free grace.

But whatever you do, find the God-centered, Christ-exalting, Bible-saturated passion of your life, and find your way to say it and live for it and die for it. And you will make a difference that lasts. You will not waste your life.

God is at work in the worst of times. He is at work doing a thousand things no one can see but him.

Satan's aim is to destroy our joy and trust and delight in God, and to make God look worthless in the world's eyes. Everytime someone forsakes God for the world, gets angry at God when part of the world is taken away from them, they highlight the world as valuable... and everytime someone stays with God, when the world is taken away, and praises God, they highlight the value and glory of God.

My feelings are not God. God is God. My feelings do not define truth. God’s word defines truth. My feelings are echoes and responses to what my mind perceives. And sometimes - many times - my feelings are out of sync with the truth. When that happens - and it happens every day in some measure - I try not to bend the truth to justify my imperfect feelings, but rather, I plead with God: Purify my perceptions of your truth and transform my feelings so that they are in sync with the truth.

One of the great uses of Twitter and Facebook will be to prove at the Last Day that prayerlessness was not from lack of time.

Sin is what you do when your heart is not satisfied with God.

Faith begins with a backward look at the cross, but it lives with a forward look at the promises

Do we eagerly long for the coming of Christ? Or do we want him to wait while our love affair with the world runs its course? That is the question that tests the authenticity of faith.

We weren't meant to be somebody--we were meant to know Somebody

God is always doing 10,000 things in your life, and you may be aware of three of them.

If you live gladly to make others glad in God, your life will be hard, your risks will be high, and your joy will be full.

The Lord is kind. He is good to all who take refuge under his wings.

God will not turn away from doing you good. He will keep on doing good. He doesn't do good to His children sometimes and bad to them other times. He keeps on doing good and He never will stop doing good for ten thousand ages of ages. When things are going bad that does not mean God has stopped doing good. It means He is shifting things around to get them in place for more good, if you will go on loving Him.

Why don't people ask us about our hope? The answer is probably that we look as if we hope in the same things they do. Our lives don't look like they are on the Calvary road, stripped down for sacrificial love, serving others with the sweet assurance that we don't need to be rewarded in this life.

In EVERY situation and EVERY circumstance of your life, God is always doing a thousand different things that you cannot see and you do not know.

The more of God's Word you know and love, the more of God's Spirit you will experience.

Grace is not simply leniency when we have sinned. Grace is the enabling gift of God not to sin. Grace is power, not just pardon.

The Gospel is not how people get to heaven. The Gospel is how people get to God.