Desiring God Blog : Posts by 约翰·派博

Don’t rest on past reading. Read your Bible more and more every year. Read it whether you feel like reading it or not. And pray without ceasing that the joy return and pleasures increase.

Three reasons this is not legalism:

1. You are confessing your lack of desire as sin, and pleading as a helpless child for the desire you long to have. Legalists don’t cry like that. They strut.
2. You are reading out of desperation for the effects of this heavenly medicine. Bible-reading is not a cure for a bad conscience; it’s chemo for your cancer. Legalists feel better because the box is checked. Saints feel better when their blindness lifts, and they see Jesus in the word. Let’s get real. We are desperately sick with worldliness, and only the Holy Spirit, by the word of God, can cure this terminal disease.
3. It is not legalism because only justified people can see the preciousness…

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I am overjoyed that The Pleasures of God is here in a new edition. You can order the book, DVD and study guide, all for $10 total.

Here’s how I would describe it. First, compare it with its older cousin, Desiring God.

Desiring God is about our glad experience of God. The Pleasures of God is about God’s glad experience of God. Desiring God argues that the essence of man’s virtue and worship consists in our delight in God. The Pleasures of God argues that the essence of God’s virtue and worship consists in his delight in God. Yes, God worships: He infinitely prizes and delights in the single Object of infinite worth—God. He is not an idolater in his delights.

The Pleasures of God is a book about the nature and character of God. The premise is that the excellence of a soul is measured by the object of its delight. If we delight in wicked things, we are wi…

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Being “in Christ Jesus” is a stupendous reality. It is breathtaking what it means to be in Christ. United to Christ. Bound to Christ. If you are “in Christ” listen to what it means for you:

1. In Christ Jesus you were given grace before the world was created. 2 Timothy 1:9, “He gave us grace in Christ Jesus before the ages began.”
2. In Christ Jesus you were chosen by God before creation. Ephesians 1:4, “God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world.”
3. In Christ Jesus you are loved by God with an inseparable love. Romans 8:38–39, “I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
4. In Christ Jesus you were redeemed and forgiven for all your sins. Ephesians 1:7, “In Chris…

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Because of the amazing mercy of God described in Psalm 106 we can cry out with hope, “O Lord, help me when you save your people” (verse 4). And what does he help us do? Obtain the fullest blessing of God: “Blessed are they who observe justice, who do righteousness at all times!” (verse 3).

So what acts of justice and righteousness in the cause of Christ-exalting life can we do?

In my sermon last Sunday (January 22, 2012), I answered with five words: Supplication, Consideration, Education, Legislation, and Proclamation. I promised I would try to unpack them more fully. Here goes.

Supplication

It was years of prayer-filled action that brought an end to abortions at Regions Hospital in St. Paul. Would not God be pleased if we set our hearts to pray that the new $16,000,000 Planned Parenthood center in St. Paul closes for lack of support, even as it begins i…

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J. C. Ryle’s strategy to reverse the destructive effects of drunkenness point to possibilities in our battle against abortion.

Ryle was the first Bishop of Liverpool, England, starting in 1880 and ending with his death in 1900. He found that one of the great destroyers of family and society was drunkenness. There were 2,402 drinking houses in the city in 1884. One for every 229 inhabitants.

His strategy to change this was “an amalgam of preaching and social aid.” He urged the preachers of his town to “boldly denounce the great sin of the day.” And he lent his voice and energy to numerous reforms (like alternative evening amusements, women’s shelters, non-alcoholic coffee bars, and licensing reform).

One strategy was to establish a Temperance Sunday Sermon once a year in January. By the end of his episcopate 191 of the 205 churches in the diocese devoted a messa…

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We are children of the light. Abortion is a work of darkness. The apostle Paul said, “Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them” (Ephesians 5:11).

Our aim, by the power of the Holy Spirit, in the name of Jesus Christ, through the authority of his word, is to glorify God by making much of his image in the unborn, and his mercy in forgiving sinners.

We would like to give you a free eBook based on three sermons I preached on abortion. We hope it helps you speak out. Please feel free to download it, print it, copy it, and share it with as many people as you like.

Here’s a sample sentence:

God is calling passive, inactive Christians today to engage our minds and hearts and hands in exposing the barren works of darkness. To be the conscience of our culture. To be the light of the world. To live in the great reality of being l…

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Psalm 135:1–6 —

Praise the Lord! Praise the name of the Lord, give praise, O servants of the Lord, ² who stand in the house of the Lord, in the courts of the house of our God! ³ Praise the Lord, for the Lord is good; sing to his name, for it is pleasant! ⁴ For the Lord has chosen Jacob for himself, Israel as his own possession. ⁵ For I know that the Lord is great, and that our Lord is above all gods. ⁶ Whatever the Lord pleases, he does, in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all deeps.

The psalm begins by calling us to praise the Lord: Praise the Lord. Praise the name of the Lord. Then, starting in verse 3 the psalmist gives us reasons for why we should feel praise rising in our hearts toward God. It says, for example (verse 3), "Praise the Lord, for the Lord is good." The list of reasons for praise goes on until it comes to verse 6, and this is the verse I wa…

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Bloodlines is one of the most autobiographical books I have written. It tells my story from racism to the path of redemption. I preached on the theme of Bloodlines yesterday to mark Martin Luther King weekend. The title of the message was “From Bloodlines to Bloodline.” I argued that God is calling his people to move from the alienation of many bloodlines to the reconciliation of the single bloodline that began on the cross of Christ.

I urged my people to read the book. Not because I care about selling books, but because I want them to know my story, to be aware to the global relevance of the issue, and to feel the hope that comes from the power of the gospel.

In making the book available in a PDF version online for free we are trying to remove every obstacle that might keep you from that experience.

Chapter six is the one I tried to unpack in this week's …

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You may have heard people vilify or extol the Puritans. J. I. Packer is among those who extol. Indeed, he thinks that this century of pastors was the greatest the church has ever known.

Some of us have found our souls richly fed by these 350-year old pastors. When we have needed spiritual food, we have found ourselves grazing in the Bible-saturated, heart-searching seventeenth century Puritans.

If you have ever wondered just who they were, here is Packer’s description and list:

[The Puritans are] a type of evangelical believer that emerged in the Church of England in the sixteenth century and reached its high peak of development in the seventeenth century in men like Richard Baxter, John Owen, Richard Sibbes, John Flavel, Thomas Brooks, Thomas Manton, Thomas Watson, Robert Traill, William Bridge, Thomas Goodwin, Stephen Charnock, Jeremiah Burroughs, John Bun…

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If you want to be inspired to pray in 2012 and don’t have time for a long book, Here is a short one.

Probably no book has had a greater effect on my prayer life in proportion to its size than E. M. Bounds, Power Through Prayer. It was the seed from which grew the tree, Brothers, We Are Not Professionals.

The preacher . .. is not a professional man; his ministry is not a profession; it is a divine institution, a divine devotion. (Location 55)

His passion is perhaps best expressed in this quote that he gives from William Wilberforce, a man of political action and great fruitfulness.

This perpetual hurry of business and company ruins me in soul if not in body. More solitude and earlier hours! I suspect I have been allotting habitually too little time to religious exercises, as private devotion and religious meditation, Scripture-reading, etc.

Hence I am lean…

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