Don't Waste Your Life

Having read John Piper's Don't Waste Your Life, here's my review/summary of the book. Arthur and I chanced upon this book at MPH in October 2008 when we were looking for Xiaoying's 21st birthday present. I went to SKS to purchase it because it was cheaper there, but changed my mind about giving it to her eventually because I felt that it was a rather heavy read. I guess I can say that I'm immensely blessed by Piper's writings, so, here am I noting down the nuggets of truth (from Chapters 1 & 2) I would want to remember, and sharing them with you.

Summary
John Piper writes, "I will tell you what a tragedy is. I will show you how to waste your life. Consider this story from the February 1998 Reader's Digest: A couple 'took early retirement from their jobs in the Northeast Gorda, Florida, where they cruise on their 30-foot trawler, play softball and collect shells...' Picture them before Christ at the great day of judgment: 'Look, Lord. See my shells.' That is a tragedy."

Chapter One
In Chapter One, entitled My Search for a Single Passion to Live By, Piper outlined briefly about his search for meaning in life. He came to a realisation that there is objective truth and absolute reality during his university days. He also pointed out that God made us, and He bought us. We belong doubly to God. Also, pursuing God's glory is virtually the same as pursuing my joy. The following poem is hung in his kitchen,
Only one life,
'Twill soon be past;
only what's done
for Christ will last.
See Mark 8:35 for Biblical support.

Chapter Two
In Chapter Two, Breakthrough-the Beauty of Christ, My Joy, it became clearer that God being glorified and God being enjoyed are not separate categories. Enjoying God makes him supremely valuable. Seeking happiness in God and glorifying God are the same.

God created us to live with a single, all-embracing, all-transforming passion, namely, a passion to glorify God by enjoying and displaying His supreme excellence in all the spheres of life. Enjoying and displaying are both crucial. If we try to display the excellence of God without joy in it, we will display a shell of hypocrisy and create scorn or legalism. But if we claim to enjoy His excellence and do not display it for others to see and admire, we deceive ourselves, because the mark of God-entralled joy is to overflow and expand by extending itself into the hearts of others. (See Isaiah 43:6-7 and 1 Corinthians 10:31 for Biblical support.)

Piper also pointed out that love is not helping someone feel good about himself. Love is doing what is best for someone. Love has to do with showing a dying soul the life-giving beauty of the glory of God, especially His grace. Every good work should be a revelation of the glory of God. What makes the good deed an act of love is not the raw act, but the passion and the sacrifice to make God himself as glories. Nothing can satisfy the soul. The soul was make to stand in awe of a Person - the only Person worthy of awe.

Now we can see that in creating us for His glory, God is creating us for our highest joy. He is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him. God is the only one Being in the universe for whom self-exaltation is the most loving at. No child complains, "I am being used" when his father delights to make the child happy with his own presense. In the same manner, God calls us to pray and think and dream and plan and work not to be made much of, but to make much of him in every part of our lives. (See Matthew 5:16, John 17:3, 1 Peter 3:18, Psalm 16:11 for Biblical evidence.)

However, it is also important to note that if we would embrace the glory of God, we must embrace the Gospel of Christ. There is no savouring of God's glory if we do not see it in Christ. This is the only window through which a sinner may see the face of God and not be incinerated. (See Philippians 2:6-8, Colossians 2:9, Colossians 1:16, Luke 10:16, John 14:6, Colossians 1:15.)