John Piper

Darkness comes. In the middle of it, the future looks blank. The temptation to quit is huge. Don't. You are in good company... You will argue with yourself that there is no way forward. But with God, nothing is impossible. He has more ropes and ladders and tunnels out of pits than you can conceive. Wait. Pray without ceasing. Hope.

Preaching is the pastor's main work, and preaching is heart work, not just mental work.

The bloodline of Jesus is thicker, deeper, stronger than the bloodline of race, ethnicity and family.

Whether sexual orientation can change or not, hearts can change and turn any sexual orientation into an occasion for the glory of Christ. Those with same-sex attraction glorify Christ through sexual abstinence and through the enrichment of significant Christ-exalting relationships in other ways.

In all the setbacks of your life as a believer, God is plotting for your joy.

We are all responsible to Jesus first, and then, under him, to various other persons and offices. Discerning the path of love and obedience when two or more of these submissive relationships collide is a call to humble, Bible-saturated, spiritual wisdom.

The Bible is the ultimate authority and infallible, not the pastor and not the elders. And it doesn't mean that you believe everything he says without examining it.

The Gospel is not a theory; the Gospel is not a philosophy or an idea; the Gospel is not a way of thinking or feeling. The Gospel is an event in history.

Intensity is all that matters in painting.

Do all things without grumbling. Why? You have a sovereign God who is on your side, who works everything together for your good.

I've always wondered, am I a writer who preaches or a preacher who writes? I don't know. I love them both.

The essence of faith is being satisfied with all that God is for us in Jesus.

As a child and a teenager, my attitudes and actions assumed the superiority of my race in almost every way without knowing or wanting to know anybody who was black, except Lucy. Lucy came to our house on Saturdays to help my mother clean. I liked Lucy, but the whole structure of the relationship was demeaning.

God created a good world that was subjected to futility because of the sinful, treasonous choice of the first human beings.

The best news of the Christian gospel is that the supremely glorious Creator of the universe has acted in Jesus Christ's death and resurrection to remove every obstacle between us and himself so that we may find everlasting joy in seeing and savoring his infinite beauty.

Redemption is not perfection. The redeemed must realize their imperfections.

Seeing & savoring Jesus Christ is the most important seeing and savoring you'll ever do.

If a tornado twists at 175 miles an hour and stays on the ground like a massive lawnmower for 50 miles, God gave the command.

Not all single women want to be married. Not all boys like football. Not all homemakers like to cook. Not all messy people are lazy. And not all the obese are gluttons. There are glands and diabetes and a dozen conditions you never heard of that may account for things. Put your sermon through the counter-stereotype sieve.

It's amazing how many introverts go into the ministry. It's amazing how many people go into the ministry who don't really like to be with people.

My mother, who grew up in Pennsylvania, literally washed my mouth out with soap once for saying, 'Shut up!' to my sister. She would have washed my mouth out with gasoline if she knew how foul my mouth was racially when she wasn't around.

Don't assume that all fat people are gluttons. And don't use the word 'fat.' There is a principle here. Learn from logic and experience not to associate things - especially in preaching - that don't necessarily go together.

Little hearts little souls give little lusts big power. Big hearts give little lusts little power.

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

I just want to preach so bad I can hardly stand it. I love what I do.

Neither Muslims nor anyone else truly worships the true God if they reject Jesus as he really is in the Gospels.

We look at life from the back side of the tapestry. And most of the time, what we see is loose threads, tangled knots and the like. But occasionally, God's light shines through the tapestry, and we get a glimpse of the larger design with God weaving together the darks and lights of existence.

Early on, you talk about God because you consider Him to be most important. But later, you realize there are means by which God is known and portrayed.

I have tried to devote my life - with all my husband failures, father failures, pastor failures, friend failures, any other possible failures I'm sure I've done them - to the God-centeredness of God and my aspiring, yearning to join Him in that activity. God is passionate about hallowing the name of God.

I owe my life and hope to the gospel. Without it I would still be strutting with racist pride, or I would be suffering the moral paralysis of 'white guilt.' But the gospel has an answer to both pride and guilt.

God tests His people through hardship.

I want to learn from everybody.

The Bible does not oppose or forbid interracial marriages but sees them as a positive good for the glory of Christ.

Jesus Christ... came into the world to vindicate the infinite worth of God's holiness which had been desecrated by our sin and which seemed... to be taken lightly because it was being passed over for nothing more than the blood of bulls.

The giving of the Quran is in Islam what the incarnation of Christ is to Christianity. If this is so, then Quran-burning is parallel to Christ-crucifying.

We belittle God when we go through the outward motions of worship and take no pleasure in His person.

When people think about 'thinking,' they often think 'academia;' they think 'threat.' They think 'coldness.' I want to reverse all those images and say, 'No, the brain God gave you is intended to throw fuel on the fire of your affections for God. It's really good at it if you let it.'

One way to appreciate C.S. Lewis is to see how his Christian humility shaped his life and work.

There are two basic restrictions on marriage in the Bible: Number one, she should marry a man. Number two, he should be a Christian.

Every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God.

The most dangerous thing in the world is the sin of self-reliance and the stupor of worldliness.

God revealed himself through the Law, which pointed to Christ as its end and goal, commanded the obedience that comes from faith, increased transgressions, and shut the mouths of all humans because no one has performed the righteousness of the Law so as not to need a substitute.

God has ordained that Satan have a long leash with God holding on to the leash because he knows that when we walk in and out of those temptations, struggling with both the physical effects that they bring and the moral effects that they bring, more of God's glory will shine.

The ultimate meaning of true womanhood is this: It is a distinctive calling of God to display the glory of his Son in ways that would not be displayed if there were no womanhood.

You can't make yourself saved. This is very threatening to people, even Christians, because of what it seems to say about freedom.

Homosexual behavior has been exploited, and reveled in, and celebrated in art, for millennia.

There are many pointers in the Bible concerning the rightness, the goodness, the beauty, the justice, the preciousness of racial harmony and diversity.

God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.

God is on the move to rescue people from misery to everlasting happiness, which can only be found in him.

God was alive when this universe exploded into existence. He was alive when Socrates drank his poison. He was the living God when William Bradford governed Plymouth Colony. He was the living God in 1966 when Thomas Altizer proclaimed him dead and Time magazine absolutely absurdly put it on the front cover.

You don't give God authority over your life. He has it, totally.

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

God is infinitely valuable. I can't think of anything that would have a greater impact on your life than for you to believe that.

Little hearts, little souls give little lusts big power. Big hearts give little lusts little power.

I can be poor, I can lose a job, I can have a hospital bill that I don't know how to pay, for I can do all these things through Him who strengthens me.

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.

When I believe in Jesus, I am united to Christ. Therefore, what he did and achieved becomes mine by this union through faith alone. His righteous life is imputed to me. What Christ achieved is counted as mine.

Blind people don't decide to see. Jesus says, 'See!' and they see.

Christ is glorified in you when he is more precious to you than all that life can give or death can take.

The Christian - the biblical - concept of mercy toward wrongdoers only exists in relation to justice. Showing mercy, in relation to wrongdoing, means treating someone better than they deserve.

God wills to be displayed and known and loved and cherished and worshiped.

Feeling loved by God means feeling glad not only that he crushed his son so that I can be forgiven but that hes crushing everything that takes away from my praising of the glory of his grace.

God has levels of willing and delighting. He wills and delights in things in different ways so that approval and disapproval can coexist without being contradictory, without canceling each other out. I am making the case here for infinite complexity.

The mind was designed not to defend what we want, but to discover what is ultimately true, which should shape our wants and satisfy them more deeply with God. The purpose of the mind is not to rationalize subjective preferences, but to recognize objective reality and to help the heart revel in God.

Sin carries in it its own misery.

Woe to us if we get our satisfaction from the food in the kitchen and the TV in the den and the sex in the bedroom with an occasional tribute to the cement blocks in the basement!