Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Don't Waste Your Summer

Last night at The Well we started a series within the series of 1 Corinthians. The series is about living a radical life that has eternal significance. It is a call to forsake the allurements of this world that our culture tells us we need for happiness, whether it is technology, education, family, safety, comfort and money. Not forsake them completely, but forsake them as ultimate. Forsake them for the surpassing, ultimate and infinite beauty and joy of Christ and follow Him.

We talked that following Paul as He followed Christ (1 Cor. 11:1) means more than just being nice, hugging kids and not cussing. It is a drastic call to live in a way that sees others as more important and to seek their good, the ultimate good being for their salvation and enjoyment of Christ, one in the same.

Below are some quotes from John Piper's Book "Don't Waste Your Life":

"You don’t have to know a lot of things for your life to make a lasting difference in the world. But you do have to know the few great things that matter, perhaps just one, and then be willing to live for them and die for them. The people that make a durable difference in the world are not the people who have mastered many things, but who have been mastered by one great thing. If you want your life to count, if you want the ripple effect of the pebbles you drop to become waves that reach the ends of the earth and roll on into eternity, you don’t need to have a high IQ. You don’t have to have good looks or riches or come from a fine family or a fine school. Instead you have to know a few great, majestic, unchanging, obvious, simple, glorious things—or one great all-embracing thing—and be set on fire by them." (Piper, DWYL, pg. 44)


"God created me—and you—to live with a single, all-embracing, all-transforming passion—namely, a passion to glorify God by enjoying and displaying his supreme excellence in all the spheres of life. Enjoying and displaying are both crucial. If we try to display the excellence of God without joy in it, we will display a shell of hypocrisy and create scorn or legalism. But if we claim to enjoy his excellence and do not display it for others to see and admire, we deceive ourselves, because the mark of God-enthralled joy is to overflow and expand by extending itself into the hearts of others. The wasted life is the life without a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples." (John Piper, DWYL, pg.. 31)



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For more from John Piper go to DesiringGod.org

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