John Piper
John Piper
John Piper is a renowned New Testament scholar, theologian, and pastor whose 33-year tenure as the chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary in Minneapolis made him one of America's most successful ministers. His popular books - Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist (1986), Spectacular Sins, What Jesus Demands from The World, Pierced by the Word, Don't Waste Your Life and more have earned multiple ECPA Book Awards for their profound insight into modern Christianity. Throughout his career, he has been blazing trails to help believers discover true joy through faith-driven living with DesiringGod.org at its helm – an initiative set forth by John himself over 30 years ago!
Organization
Desiring GodEducation
- ThD in New Testament Studies - University of Munich, Munich, West Germany
- Bachelor of Divinity - Fuller Theological Seminary
- Bachelor of Art in Literature and minored in Philosophy - Wheaton College
27 Servants of Sovereign Joy: Faithful, Flawed, and Fruitful
From Bestselling Author John Piper: 27 Biographies of Notable Figures from Church History, including Augustine, John Calvin, and Martin LutherThroughout church history, the...
The Pastor as Scholar and the Scholar as Pastor: Reflections on Life and Ministry
Continuing a Gold Medallion Award-winning legacy, the completely revised Expositor's Bible Commentary puts world-class biblical scholarship in your hands.A staple for...
What Is Saving Faith?: Reflections on Receiving Christ as a Treasure
The author challenges you to receive Christ as a treasure and not just have an intellectual understanding. Your saving faith changes the way you live and relate to the world. The book offers thought-provoking insights into the true meaning of faith.Providence
From Genesis to Revelation, the providence of God directs the entire course of redemptive history. Providence is "God's purposeful sovereignty". Its extent...
Let the Nations Be Glad
Since its publication a decade ago, Let the Nations Be Glad! has provided thousands of seminary students, missionaries, and pastors with a sound theological foundation for...
Andrew Fuller: Holy Faith, Worthy Gospel, World Mission
Best-selling author John Piper puts the life of Andrew Fuller on display as inspiration for Christians to devote themselves to knowing, guarding, and spreading the true...
Three emails came in this week asking you to share your testimony of coming to Christ and your earliest memories of being a Christian.
Well, God saved me out of a life of drugs and crime and sex when I was six years old. I got that from David Michael.
God saved me at my mother’s knee in a Florida motel on vacation. I am blown away 61 years later (I was six then) even though I cannot remember it. I want to encourage people here who don’t remember the precise moment of their conversion. How can I say, “It blows me away that God saved me” if I don’t remember it? How can I say that? Isn’t that ridiculous or a contradiction? No, it is not a contradiction. I have got two reasons.
The Bible Tells Me So
One reason is that the Bible tells me what happened to me, not my memory and not my experience. I would tell those who have a stunning testimony that they do remember to be careful. Your memory and experience are fallible and can be misled. At the root, you had better find out what happened to you from the Bible. And at root, then, we are both going to have the same testimony. What happened to me was that I was raised from the dead. I remember our youth pastor, Kempton Turner, said to hundreds of young people, “The resurrection of the dead is never boring. None of you has a boring testimony.”
That is absolutely true. I was raised from the dead when I was six. God Almighty took out my heart of stone and put in a heart of flesh. He opened my eyes to see the light of the gospel. I was blind and he let even a six-year-old see the mansion of his truth. I received the gift of faith. It was a pure miracle, a pure gift. Repentance was given to me by a sovereign act of God. That is my first reason for saying that I am blown away. I am blown away by something I don’t remember, because the Bible tells me what happened to me. That is way more reliable than if I could remember it.
Not by Works
Here is the other reason: I am blown away by my conversion that I don’t remember because of the unbelievable sinfulness of John Piper that I have watched for 61 years. I have watched myself for a long time, and I have hated the remaining corruption in me for a long time. There is a lot in me that I do not like. The more mature I become, the more I see how tendentious I am, how prone I am to wander. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that if there was not sovereign grace at the beginning, and sovereign grace at every moment along the way, what I see of my sin since my conversion is enough to totally damn me. Therefore I am amazed.
“I don’t have to remember a horrible life of sinning before I was saved in order to tremble at my sin.”
I don’t have to remember a horrible life of sinning before I was saved in order to tremble at my sin. If anybody wishes they had gone some awful way and then been plucked out of that awfulness and had a nice story to tell, I just don't think they are looking at the mirror very carefully. There is enough corruption in us to make us tremble and to make us feel how incalculably horrible sin is. There is enough to show us how precious grace is. There is enough to blow us away that God broke into our life and created this hatred for sin and this longing for righteousness and our reliance on God.
My story is one that I can’t remember, and I hope it encourages many.