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"FridayReflection"
18th April 2025
'John Piper'
Founder and teacher of Desiring God.com
"Boasting Only in the Cross"
Galatians 6 v 14
"As for me, however, I will boast only about the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ; for by means of his cross the world is dead to me, and I am dead to the world."
Galatians 6 v 14
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, 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 a few great things.
If you want your life to count, if you want the ripple effect of the pebbles you drop to become waves that reach the ends of the earth and roll on for centuries and into eternity, you don't have to have a high IQ or EQ; you don't have to have good looks or riches; you don't have to come from a fine family or a fine school.
You have to know a few great, majestic, unchanging, obvious, simple, glorious things, and be set on fire by them.
"Don't coast through life without a passion.
Make your life count for something great and for eternity."
But I know that not everybody in 'this crowd' wants your life to make a difference.
There are hundreds of you - you don't care whether you make a lasting difference for something great, you just want people to like you.
If people would just like you, you'd be satisfied.
Or if you could just have good job with a good wife and a couple good kids and a nice car and long weekends and a few good friends, a fun retirement, and quick and easy death and no hell - if you could have that (minus God) - you'd be satisfied.
That is a tragedy in the making.
Three weeks ago we got word at our church that Ruby Eliason and Laura Edwards had both been killed in Cameroon.
Ruby was over eighty.
Single all her life, she poured it out for one great thing: to make Jesus Christ known among the unreached, the poor, and the sick.
Laura was a widow, a medical doctor, pushing eighty years old, and serving at Ruby's side in Cameroon.
The brakes failed, the car went over the cliff, and they were both killed instantly.
And I asked my people: Was that a tragedy?
Two lives, driven by one great vision, spent in unheralded service to the perishing poor for the glory of Jesus Christ - two decades after almost all their American counterparts have retired to throw their lives away on trifles in Florida or New Mexico.
No. That is not a tragedy. That is a glory.
I tell you what a tragedy is.
I'll read to you from Reader's Digest (Feb. 1998) what a tragedy is:
"Bob and Penny . . . took early retirement from their jobs in the Northeast five years ago when he was 59 and she was 51.
Now they live in Punta Gorda, Florida, where they cruise on their 30-foot trawler, play softball and collect shells."
The American Dream: come to the end of your life - your one and only life - and let the last great work before you give an account to your Creator be,
"I collected shells. See my shells."
That is a tragedy.
And people today are spending billions of dollars to persuade you to embrace that tragic dream.
And I get forty minutes to plead with you: don't buy it.
Don't waste your life.
It is so short and so precious.
I grew up in a home where my father spent himself as an evangelist to bring the gospel of Jesus Christ to the lost.
He had one consuming vision: preach the gospel.
There was a plaque in our kitchen for all my growing up years.
Now it hangs in our living room.
I have looked at it almost daily for about 48 years.
It says,
"Only one life, 'twill soon be past.
Only what's done for Christ will last."
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John Piper
is founder and teacher of Desiring God and chancellor of Bethlehem College and Seminary.
For 33 years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
He is author of more than 50 books, including Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist and most recently Foundations for Lifelong Learning: Education in Serious Joy.
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So I look out on you as sons and daughters and I plead with you as a father - perhaps the father you never had.
Or the father who never had a vision for you like I have for you, and God has for you.
Or the father who has a vision for you, but it's all about money and status.
I look out on you as sons and daughters and I plead with you:
Want your lives to count for something great and for eternity.
Want this. Don't coast through life without a passion.
The declaration is based on Isaiah 26 v 8:
We follow your will and put our hope in you; you are all that we desire.
Here is not just a body but a soul.
Here is not just a soul, but a soul with a passion and a desire.
Here is not just a desire for being liked or for softball and shells, here is a desire for something infinitely great, and infinitely beautiful, and infinitely valuable and infinitely satisfying - the name and the glory of God - "Your name and your renown are the desire of our souls."
"Don't waste your life. It is so short and so precious."
This is what I live to know and long to experience.
The mission statement of my life and the church I serve:
"We exist - I exist - to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples."
You don't have to say it like I say it.
But whatever you do, find your passion and find your way to say it and live for it and die for it.
And you will make a difference that lasts.
You will be like the apostle Paul.
Nobody had a more single-minded vision for his life than Paul did.
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