5:17 church

Does that sound like a John Piper quote or what?!

On Sundays I have been trying to read a chapter of Piper’s book, Seeing and Savouring Jesus Christ.  I’ve been trying to do this because I realised from/after our big trip overseas in July-Aug this year that I was often arriving at church (or music practice) distracted or frazzled rather than eager to focus on the excellencies of the Lord Jesus so I could declare and respond to them whole-heartedly.  This was making church a struggle for me and making me less than edifying for others and not very glorifying to Jesus.  Bad news.

Church overseas (especially at and after the Worship God 09 conference) was a joy largely because instead of being distracted (holidays are good like that!) I was focused, and helped by the service leaders to focus, so I learned I have to actively prepare myself for church every week, even several hours beforehand.  Hence, SASJC.

In the introduction to this book, Piper says:

When I speak of seeing Jesus Christ, I don’t mean seeing with the eyes of your head, but the eyes of your heart. … When we see with our spiritual eyes, we see the truth and beauty and value of Jesus Christ for what they really are.  Thus a blind person today may see Christ more clearly than many who have eyes.

Everyone can read the stories of Jesus and “see” the portraits painted by the words of those who knew him.  But not everyone sees truth and beauty and infinite value.  Some see only myth.  Some see foolishness.  Some see offense.  ”Seeing they do not see.”  …

Savoring Jesus Christ is the response to this second [spiritual] kind of seeing.  When you see something as true and beautiful and valuable, you savor it.  That is, you treasure it.  You cherish and admire and prize it.  Spiritual seeing and spiritual savoring are so closely connected that it would be fair to say: If you don’t savor Christ, you haven’t seen Christ for who he is.  If you don’t prize him above all things, you haven’t apprehended his true worth.

The aim of this book is to help you see and savor Christ.

I just read chapter 4 about Jesus’ joy.  It was a 4.5 page meditation on how Jesus is joyful, rejoices, pursued joy, and gives us his joy.  This is fantastic and amazing because his joy is indestructible despite being concomitant with suffering (his and ours and others’).  We can think Jesus was just bland and stoic or worse, sad, so we can live our Christian lives like this too.  But just like Jesus, we can possess an indestructible joy in God as well as live sensitively and effectively in a broken world while waiting to live forever joyfully with him.

mmmm, I thought.  I’d like to grow in this joy.  How good to be able to pray Piper’s indefatigable prayers at the end of each chapter; an excerpt -

May Christ so dwell in our hearts with his indestructible joy that day by day we are conformed more and more to his glad image.  And so may we be a place of refuge and eternal refreshment for a hopeless, joy-seeking world of people who do not know they are starved for the glory of the gladness of God in Jesus Christ.  In his name we pray, amen.

Amen indeed.

Appetite whetted?  We have several of Piper’s books available for borrowing, or find them all online for free!