I recently started reading a book that was given to me a long time ago titled
Dont Waste Your Life, by John Piper. It’s the sort of book you wish you had read much earlier on in life, because it presents fundamental christian principles in a very pragmatic manner. In other words, he tells you what you need to know in a way that you are able to know it.
I’ve only read two chapters thus far. It’s taken me so long because he presents these very excellent ideas in such simple terms that I have to put the book down and go think about them for a couple of hours. Part of the first chapter is about truth. Let me paraphrase: God is truth. He defines it, he determines it, he is it. There arent many substantial problems with truth, right-and-wrong, ethics and etc. when you believe in the Living God who is truth. However, when you, or someone, removes the existence of God from truth, there is this cataclysmic explosion of absolutely everything! i’m out of breath just writing about it! If you remove the foundation of truth from truth, you’re left with absolutely nothing. When you take God out of the picture, you cant even prove that you’re looking at a painting.
Another point Piper makes is the idea that delighting in God is glorifying him. To be honest with you, i havent really and truly made that connection until reading this book. I’ve always thought delighting in God meant sitting by a stream reading Psalm 23, and that glorifying God was singing
How Great Thou Art. But it seems to me now that delighting in God is glorifying God. I think the link between these two concepts is his law. Think of it in transative terms: delighting in God= following his laws, following his laws = brings glory to God, therefore, delighting in God=bringing him glory. You might be thinking “what made josh think about God’s law when he was talking about delight?” well, please read Psalms 119 (thanks very much katie) and one. He delighted in them. He delighted in the word of God, which brought glory to God.
Another really great thought is that these two ideas- truth and delight, are very much connected. We delight in the truth of God; we delight in God because he is true; we delight in the true God.
sDg
