I’ve been meaning to start this thread for ages…

Who here has read one of John Piper’s books? I read ” Don’t Waste Your Life ” about a month or so ago and really enjoyed it.

Normally I make it thru the 1st chapter of these books and then they go on the shelf for “later” (I’m hopeless), but DWYL grabbed me from the start, Piper’s got a great style. I also loved the message - with a title as blunt as “Don’t Waste Your Life” I didn’t think I could go wrong, and I didn’t. The contents weren’t exactly what I was expecting (which was good, they were far better) and it was extremely refreshing to come across some new ideas. New insofar as I hadn’t heard them before - Piper happily attributes the core message to ye olde Jonathan Edwards, and naturally the bible of course (!) - but its the kind of stuff you go “yeah, that makes sense, why haven’t I heard this before?!”

Piper’s plea in the book to not waste your life, but to instead ‘live and die for a single, all embracing passion – to make much of Christ in life and death, because that’s the life that magnifies Christ the most’ was very helpful, as was the way he contextualises it in the minutae of daily life through to the grand plan for the rest of your days until you die. To be honest I find it hard to explain or do justice to the book, the message cuts very deep and its not something you grasp in its entirity the first time thru, which is why I like it!

I picked up DWYL again on the weekend before lending it to a friend and skimmed the first 60 pages - so many nuggets of gold in there, I swear you could get a years worth of sermons out of Piper’s observations in the book :)

Anyway, what should I read next? I’m thinking “Desiring God” is the most obvious thing to pick up… any suggestions?

I also found Piper has a fairly enourmous web site with sermon manuscripts & audio plus a couple of books online, and more which is really cool, good on them for embracing the web.

I’d like to reply in detail but time (and children) don’t really allow it…

Anyway I read Desiring God a couple of years ago and really enjoyed it. It’s a refreshing and inspiring book based on the idea that as created beings our main purpose in life is to love God and delight in him. [Of course he says it much better than that.]

If you want to borrow it…

Sarah