I am starting my first book for 2008 … John Piper’s “Pierced by the Word”. Any thoughts on this book?  Ever read it?  I will probably get through other books before I do this one, but that’s only because there is so much in one ,three to four page chapter, that I am going to take the 31 chapter book a day at a time, so I can chew on it.

  I love how John Piper is always talking about the glory of God.  In every book of his that I have read, he talks about it.  In the first chapter of this book, he talks about the glory of God being the central focus of the story of the death of Lazarus.  He says that today so many people would be up in arms about the fact that Jesus “stayed two days longer in the place where he was” (John 11:6) while Lazarus was dying, and for putting Mary and Martha through the pain they experienced in those few days.  

He then goes on to tell of how we should not begin to tell Jesus what love is.  At Passion this year he gave a definition of love that stuck. Hard.  I was happy to find him use that definition in this book : ” love is doing whatever you need to do to help people see and savor the glory of God in Christ forever and ever”. How true.  Jesus is the only satisfying reality.