Top 450 John Piper Quotes (2024 Update)
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301. “Therefore, at the heart of the meaning of work is creativity. If you are God, your work is to create out of nothing. If you are not God, but like God – that is, if you are human – your work is to take what God has made and shape it and use it to make him look great.”

— John Piper

302. “Our obedience is God’s pleasure when it proves that God is our treasure. This is good news, because it means very simply that the command to obey is the command to be happy in God. The commandments of God are only as hard to obey as the promises of God are hard to believe. The Word of God is only as hard to obey as the beauty of God is hard to cherish.”

— John Piper

303. “Whatever it takes, Lord, keep me desperate for You because I tend to wander when I stop feeling my need for You.”

— John Piper

304. “I measure Your love for me by the magnitude of the wrath I deserved, and the wonder of Your mercy by putting Christ in my place.”

— John Piper

305. “God is not an employer looking for employees. He is an Eagle looking for people who will take refuge under his wings. He is looking for people who will leave father and mother and homeland or anything else that may hold them back from a life of love under the wings of Jesus.”

— John Piper

306. “Tact is that quality of grace that wins the confidence of people who are sure you won’t do or say something stupid. You can’t inspire a following if people have to hang their heads in embarrassment at the inappropriate and insensitive things you say or do. Tact is especially needed in a leader to help cope with embarrassing or tragic situations.”

— John Piper

307. “When it comes to killing my sin, I don’t wait for the miracle, I act the miracle.”

— John Piper

308. “The greatest act of freeing happened when Jesus died in our place and paid our debt.”

— John Piper

309. “The Bible does not oppose or forbid interracial marriages but sees them as a positive good for the glory of Christ.”

— John Piper

310. “Intensity is all that matters in painting.”

— John Piper

311. “A godly life is lived out of an astonished heart – a heart that is astonished at grace.”

— John Piper

312. “If we love God’s fame and are committed to magnifying His name above all things, we cannot be indifferent to world missions.”

— John Piper

313. “If you are like me, you may have strong longings from time to time for the mighty working of the holy Spirit in your life... But what I have found most often in my own life is the failure to open myself to the full measure of the Spirit’s work by believing the promises of God.”

— John Piper

314. “I do not elevate the time or mode of baptism to a primary doctrine.”

— John Piper

315. “The Christian life becomes impossible. That is, it becomes supernatural.”

— John Piper

316. “For the mind of faith, a promised act of God is as good as done.”

— John Piper

317. “If a tornado twists at 175 miles an hour and stays on the ground like a massive lawnmower for 50 miles, God gave the command.”

— John Piper

318. “The key to praying with power is to become the kind of persons who do not use God for our ends but are utterly devoted to being used for His ends.”

— John Piper

319. “It’s amazing how many introverts go into the ministry. It’s amazing how many people go into the ministry who don’t really like to be with people.”

— John Piper

320. “Love is helping people toward the greatest beauty, the highest value, the deepest satisfaction, the most lasting joy, the biggest reward, the most wonderful friendship, and the most overwhelming worship – love is helping people toward God.”

— John Piper

321. “The key to endurance in the cause of self-sacrificing love is not heroic willpower, but deep, unshakable confidence that the joy we have tasted in fellowship with Christ will not disappoint us in death.”

— John Piper

322. “When the heart no longer feels the truth of hell, the gospel passes from good news to simply news.”

— John Piper

323. “I see no thread running through my work; I simply get on with my life and my painting.”

— John Piper

324. “Preaching is the pastor’s main work, and preaching is heart work, not just mental work.”

— John Piper

325. “We will not let you choose between being a lover of God and his sovereignty and being a lover of lost people.”

— John Piper

326. “Prayer is not for the enhancement of our comforts but for the advancement of Christ’s kingdom.”

— John Piper

327. “Some of us are afraid of getting too emotional when we sing. But the problem isn’t emotions. It’s emotionalism. Emotionalism pursues feelings as ends in themselves. It’s wanting to feel something with no regard for how that feeling is produced or its ultimate purpose.”

— John Piper

328. “The fight for joy in Christ is not a fight to soften the cushion of Western comforts. It is a fight for strength to live a life of self-sacrificing love.”

— John Piper

329. “If you must choose between loving someone and acting so that they feel loved, always choose to love them.”

— John Piper

330. “Worship is ultimate, not missions. Because God is ultimate, not man.”

— John Piper

331. “I do not aim to be immediately practical but eternally helpful.”

— John Piper

332. “The right creative act makes its own laws, and always will do.”

— John Piper

333. “If my life was to have a single, all-satisfying, unifying passion, it would have to be God’s passion.”

— John Piper

334. “God made us alive and secured us in Christ so that he could make us the beneficiaries of everlasting kindness from infinite riches of grace. This is not because we are worthy. Quite the contrary, it is to show the infinite measure of his worth.”

— John Piper

335. “The goal of Bethlehem College and Seminary cannot be expressed with man as the end point. Christ is the endpoint.”

— John Piper

336. “Preferring anything above Christ is the very essence of sin. It must be fought.”

— John Piper

337. “Most foundationally, marriage is the doing of God. And ultimately, marriage is the display of God.”

— John Piper

338. “Enjoyment of Jesus is not like icing on the cake; it’s like powder in the shell.”

— John Piper

339. “But not only does the pursuit of joy in God give strength to endure; it is the key to breaking the power of sin on our way to heaven.”

— John Piper

340. “Evangelicals are distraught over the state of America because they have not been taught that we’re aliens here.”

— John Piper

341. “Why Christians do what they do is just as important as what they do. Bad motives ruin good acts.”

— John Piper

342. “Abstraction is the way to the heart – it is not the heart itself.”

— John Piper

343. “No one will be able to rise to the magnificence of the missionary cause who does not feel the magnificence of Christ.”

— John Piper

344. “Our concern with truth is simply an echo of our concern with God .”

— John Piper

345. “If you cannot embrace the pain of learning but must have instant gratification, you forfeit the greatest rewards of life.”

— John Piper

346. “Prayer is the form of faith that connects us today with the grace that will make us adequate for tomorrow’s ministry.”

— John Piper

347. “There are two basic restrictions on marriage in the Bible: Number one, she should marry a man. Number two, he should be a Christian.”

— John Piper

348. “Which means, therefore, that our Bible reading is never just for seeing, never just for learning and doctrine. It is not even just for savoring, if that savoring is thought of in a private way that leaves us unchanged in our relationship with others. No. We read the Bible – we always read the Bible – for the kind of seeing and savoring Christ that transforms us into his likeness.”

— John Piper

349. “Homosexual behavior has been exploited, and reveled in, and celebrated in art, for millennia.”

— John Piper

350. “We are more than a collection of appetites – we are of God.”

— John Piper