Desiring God Blog : Posts by Tony Reinke

I find it easy to slip into vague gratefulness, and vague gratefulness is as hollow as a light bulb. Mostly I notice this at the dinner table with my family. The vague verbiage I speak over our food is a reflection of my vague thoughts about God and his provisions spread across the table. (It’s certainly not a reflection of my wife’s cooking!)

If you find this vaguity in your prayers, Douglas Wilson offers us a remedy in his new book Father Hunger. In a section on vocation, Wilson points us to look deeper into the gracious provisions from God:

We have to understand that all Christians are called, and are called to labor self-consciously and faithfully in their calling, whether it is l…

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What follows is a collection of 20 quotes that caught my attention as I read Douglas Wilson’s new book, Father Hunger: Why God Calls Men to Love and Lead Their Families (Thomas Nelson, 2012):

"In human history, there will never be a more perfect father-and-son moment than this moment between Father and Son [Matthew 3:16–17]. This is the keynote — pleasure. This is the pitch that a father/son relationship needs to match — ‘well pleased.’ When we don’t match that pitch, a lot of things start going wrong.” (12)

“The fact that these other things have not been added to us, the fact that we live in fatherless times, reveals our attitudes toward God the Father. Father hunger is one of the chief…

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Puritan Thomas Watson, A Body of Divinity:

If anything can make us rise off our bed of sloth, and serve God with all our might, it should be this, the hope of our near enjoyment of God forever.

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Previous images —

• O Mother, Great Is Thy Power
• e-Boasting
• The Chief End of Man

 

 

Four superheroes unite in "The Avengers Initiative" — Thor, The Incredible Hulk, Captain America, and the Iron Man — a collaborative of the world's greatest powers, called together when cosmic evil threatens the planet.

This is the storyline behind the The Avengers (2012), a movie that brought together these superheroes into one allegiance. And audiences have responded. In its first three days in U.S. theaters, the movie earned a record-smashing $200.3 million in box office revenue.

We are attracted to this team of superheroes because they are a response team called on to suppress evil. But when we walk out of the movie theater, we are faced with questions. Why don't we see God destroyin…

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From Lydia Brownback's new book, A Woman’s Wisdom: How the Book of Proverbs Speaks to Everything (Crossway, 2012), pages 170–171:

The way we use our time is always going to be shaped by how we view our time. Do we see it as a gift or as a right?

Those who view time as a gift can echo the psalmist who said, “Teach us to number our days, that we may get a heart of wisdom” (Ps. 90:12). They realize that their time is actually a God-given asset that they are to invest for God’s glory. They are cognizant of the fact that an hour gone by can never be relived.

Conversely, those who view time as a right tend to hoard their hours for selfish pleasure and often resent having to invest energy …

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Charles Spurgeon, The Sword and Trowel (September, 1873):

The devil never reckons a man to be lost so long as he has a good mother alive. O woman, great is thy power!

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Praying "in Jesus' name" is more than attaching the phrase to the end of each prayer. So what types of prayers are prayed "in Jesus' name"? In this three-minute clip from his latest sermon, Pastor John says it has more to do with our prayer’s content than in its closing. He provides us with four prayer-filters.

In John 14:12 Jesus tells his disciples that believers will do "greater works" than Jesus himself did on earth. Whoa, wait, what?!

So how are believers' works "greater" than Jesus’ works on earth? John Piper explains in this three-minute clip from his most recent sermon:

John Piper, Don't Waste Your Life (Crossway, 2003), page 162:

Missions exists because worship doesn’t.

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What follows are 20 quotes that caught my attention as I read Matt Chandler's new book, The Explicit Gospel (Crossway, 2012):

“More often than not, we want him to have fairy wings and spread fairy dust and shine like a precious little star, dispensing nothing but good times on everyone, like some kind of hybrid of Tinker Bell and Aladdin’s Genie. But the God of the Bible, this God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, is a pillar of fire and a column of smoke.” (29)

“We carry an insidious prosperity gospel around in our dark, little, entitled hearts.” (31)

“Because a God who is ultimately most focused on his own glory will be about the business of restoring us, who are all broken images of h…

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