Our obedience is God's pleasure when it proves that God is our treasure. This is good news, because it means very simply that the command to obey is the command to be happy in God. The commandments of God are only as hard to obey as the promises of God are hard to believe. The Word of God is only as hard to obey as the beauty of God is hard to cherish.
Interpretation
Obedience to God leads to true happiness as it reflects our love for Him.
This quote by John Piper emphasizes that genuine obedience to God's commandments stems from recognizing Him as our ultimate treasure. It suggests that the challenges of obedience are directly related to our understanding and belief in God's promises and beauty; thus, if we truly cherish and value God, obedience becomes a joyful response rather than a burdensome task.
In practice
Use this quote in a sermon to illustrate the joy of following God's will.
God will not turn away from doing you good. He will keep on doing good. He doesn't do good to His children sometimes and bad to them other times. He keeps on doing good and He never will stop doing good for ten thousand ages of ages. When things are going bad that does not mean God has stopped doing good. It means He is shifting things around to get them in place for more good, if you will go on loving Him.
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.
Do all things without grumbling. Why? You have a sovereign God who is on your side, who works everything together for your good.
Christ did not die to make good works merely possible or to produce a half-hearted pursuit. He died to produce in us a passion for good deeds. Christian purity is not the mere avoidance of evil, but the pursuit of good.
The key to Christian living is a thirst and hunger for God. And one of the main reasons people do not understand or experience the sovereignty of grace and the way it works through the awakening of sovereign joy is that their hunger and thirst for God is so small.
Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn't.
Do not be afraid! Our Father is patient, he loves us, he gives us Jesus to guide us on the way which leads to the promised land. Jesus is the light who brightens the darkness. He is our peace.
You must keep all earthy treasures out of your heart, and let Christ be your treasure, and let Him have your heart.
The greatest act of faith is that which rises to your lips in total darkness together with the sacrifices, sufferings and wholehearted efforts of a determined will to do good. This act of faith strikes through the darkness of your soul like lightening. In the midst of tempest it raises you up and leads you to God.
Perhaps only when human effort had done it's best and failed, would God's power alone be free to work.
There is nothing more beautiful than to be surprised by the Gospel, by the encounter with Christ. There is nothing more beautiful than to know Him and to speak to others of our friendship with Him.
I wish for each of you a time, perhaps only an hour, spent in silent meditation and quiet reflection on the wonder and the majesty of this, the Son of God. Our joy at this season is because He came into the world.
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