Plena satisfação em Deus

by John Piper

O propósito da maturidade espiritual é magnificar a glória de Deus, para que esta seja vista e admirada pelos homens.

John Piper, autor de vários livros, discorre neste livrete sobre a plena satisfação em Deus, explicando que o nosso desejo em satisfazer-nos deve ser segundo os propósitos dEle e para a Glória dEle.

Sobre o autor:

John Piper exerce seu ministério pastoral na Bethlehem Baptist Church, em Minneapolis. Estudou teologia no Fuller Theological Seminary e obteve seu doutorado pela Universidade de Munique. É o fundador e presidente do ministério Desiring God. Autor de mais de 30 livros, vários deles publicados em português pela Editora Fiel. É casado com Noël Piper com quem tem 4 filhos.

Genres: Christian, Theology, Christianity, Christian Living, Nonfiction, Faith, Religion

76 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

John Piper is founder and teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary. For 33 years, he served as senior pastor at Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

He grew up in Greenville, South Carolina, and studied at Wheaton College, Fuller Theological Seminary (B.D.), and the University of Munich (D.theol.). For six years, he taught Biblical Studies at Bethel College in St. Paul, Minnesota, and in 1980 accepted the call to serve as pastor at Bethlehem.

John is the author of more than 50 books and more than 30 years of his preaching and teaching is available free at desiringGod.org. John and his wife, Noel, have four sons, one daughter, and twelve grandchildren.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Reviews

[Dr. David Steele · Rating 5 out of 5]

Desiring God is a book devoted to helping readers find their happiness in God. The theme is that "God is most glorified in me when I am most satisfied in him." Dr. Piper carefully builds his case for this concept and calls it Christian hedonism. The issue for the Christian is one of desire. Will one feast on the pleasures of sin or will he run to the streams that God offers and drink from his delights.

Christian hedonism is really a philosophy of life that is driven by five convictions. 1) The longing to be happy is a universal experience, and it is good, not sinful. 2) We should never try to deny or resist our longing to be happy. Rather we should seek to intensify this longing and nourish it with whatever will provide the deepest and most enduring satisfaction. 3) The deepest and most enduring happiness is found in God alone. 4) The happiness we find in God reaches its consummation when it is shared with others in love. 5) To the extent we try to abandon the pursuit of our own pleasure, we fail to honor God and love people. Or, to put it positively: the pursuit of pleasure is a necessary part of all worship and virtue. In other words, the chief end of man is to glorify God by enjoying Him forever.

Piper develops the concept of Christian hedonism by applying the principles to the subjects of conversion, worship, love, Scripture, prayer, money, marriage, missions and suffering (Suffering has been added to the tenth anniversary edition of the book).

Desiring God is filled to the brim with strengths. The writing is clear and thought-provoking. The content is not abstract and unrelated to life. Rather it hits the reader right between the eyes with the truth of God. Second, the writer comes to the table with a Reformed worldview which pervades the book [I might add that the writer rejects the Reformed emphasis on the Covenant of works]. Third, this book forces the reader to deal with matters of the heart. Forth, this book is radically God-centered. Every subject discussed comes back to the issue of the Lordship of Jesus and whether or not the reader is finding his complete satisfaction in Him.

Piper has written a tremendous book. He has the heart of a pastor and the mind of a theologian, a combination difficult to find in twenty-first century pastors. Desiring God is a passionate book. The contents will not only bring the reader to tears, but will engage his thinking in ways beyond the scope of his imagination. Desiring God is a practical book. It challenges readers to re-examine cherished presuppositions and think biblically about crucial life issues.

- One of the most important books written in the last 100 years!

www.baldreformer.wordpress.com

[Stephie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book. The primary message is this: not only is it our chief end as humans to desire God and enjoy Him forever, but is it God's chief end to glorify himself and enjoy himself forever.

This book has been instrumental for me in understanding God's justice & mercy and how they play out perfectly together for his glory...even when it's hard to see or understand.

I strongly recommend this book as a foundational read for anyone who struggles with questions like: "why is the universe the way it is?", "what is the purpose of my life?" or "why did God allow (fill in the blank) to happen."

[Sagely · Rating 2 out of 5]

John Piper exerts tremendous influence over the hearts, minds, careers, and relationships of some of my dearest friends. Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist, in particular, stands as a turning point in many of their stories of following Jesus.

I haven't been a fan of Piper. There was a point in the mid-2000s when I didn't mind hearing one of his sermons now and again, but his fierce rhetoric on gender relations and his assumed ability to name who's in and out of God's family and God's judgment have left me with a foul taste in my mouth. To me, his example and message distort Jesus'. This is led to some long, hard discussions with friends who exult over Piper's way of propounding "biblical truth." No relationships have been shipwrecked over Piper yet, but he makes himself quite the obstacle at times.

My dirty secret is that I've read little of what Piper's written (maybe The Supremacy of God in Preaching and parts of Let the Nations Be Glad!: The Supremacy of God in Missions for seminary courses). Most of my opinion of him is based on Internet hearsay. The blogosphere really shouldn't constitute the basis of our opinions of anyone, right?

So I picked up Desiring God, finally choosing to read it myself.

I sincerely hoped, even expected, that Piper might say something in this book that would change my attitude toward him. The saying goes that God draws straight lines with crooked sticks. Some of Piper's statements, actions, and positions are ridiculously wrong-headed--but what if that's just the crookedness of the stick? (After all, I read Augustine, even though he said some noxious things in his life.) Might not God have given Piper some insight, some truth that Jesus' followers need now more than ever? I hoped this would be the case.

As I read the Introduction and first chapter, I was hopeful. Piper seemed to be making an appeal for reconsidering the place of the affections in our discipleship. This is a message that I need to hear--too often I suppress my feelings in favor of what I know. I need my heart to burn with fierce longing for God's kingdom; I need to weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice. An appeal to a spirituality centered on joy seems like it may be just that.

But that's not the kind of joy Piper's talking about. Piper let's show a little bit of his own story in comments here and there. He grew up in a joyless branch of Christianity, a Reformed asceticism (the same one that drove the early industrial economy, right?). Joy--as in enjoy>ment was frowned upon as unholy and selfish. I trust that Piper needed a revival of joy in his life. It surely is joyful to follow God at times!

But joy, at its heart, is always a communal reality. It's something that we feel with others, with many others, or at least wish we could. Piper pays lip service to this idea with quote from C S Lewis. But joy as Piper presents it is fundamentally a personal reality--personal, as in a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

Piper's argument for Christian hedonism is that God commands us to delight in God. He spells this out as meaning we are to take delight in God's increasing glory. Rejoicing as God's becomes evermore glorious (in God's own Trinitarian self-regard) is the human person's greatest joy because this is what we were created for--to be amplifiers or magnifiers of God's joy. It is our greatest joy because the alternative is God's wrathful punishment. There is no third option. Every other source of happiness or delight becomes bitter if our lack of joy in God results in our eternal damnation.

The basic question of Christian hedonism is the orientation of the individual soul with respect to God: do we delight in God's glory or hate it? If one delights in God's glory, then one's personal, individual delight will be great, and one will cling to and be sustained by that ultimate delight, regardless of one's situation, experiences, and relationships. If one continues to hate God's glory, then one's eternal punishment will invalidate every accidental happiness. Joy is corollary to personal salvation and tangential to human relationships.

This tangential character of the pursuit of joy in God comes through in subsequent chapters where Piper tries to situate Christian hedonism in a variety of spheres: worship, service, money, marriage, missions, suffering. Piper's philosophy remains an abstract arm's length from any of these real, human, interpersonal situations. Each chapter feels more like an exercise in moral calculus than practical theological wisdom for living discipleship.

Piper's refrain by the end of the book is that Christian hedonism finds its fountain of joy in God and overflows in love for neighbor. That's how it feels: Rather than jumping into the stream, this stream that might bubble up just about anywhere, Christian hedonism feels like an industrial waterworks, with too many moving parts, gears and levers, to be the overflowing life of God.

Besides the conflict caused by my basic conviction that discipleship, as well as joy and glory, are fundamentally communal realities, I also found Desiring God frustrating to read at a literary level. Its subtitle is: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist. Each chapter felt like just that: a meditation, a detached pensee, rather than an unfolding argument. I want a sustained engagement with Piper's thought; here I found fleeting passes, never enough for me to really sink my teeth into.

Perhaps I chose the wrong place to start a serious interaction with Piper. Friends, if there are better books that Piper has written, please let me know. Overall, I found Desiring God disappointing.

[Khari · Rating 1 out of 5]

Hallelujah! It's over! Praise God!

Excuse me a moment while I go purge Piper from my to-read list. There. Done. Never again will I read another one of his books.

This book was disappointing on so many levels. It had a great title! Whose promise was never delivered. It had a couple of good chapters, at the beginning. I started it full of expectations, hope, and innocence, it quickly turned into disbelief, despair, and even a bit of anger.

I did not like this book. It was extremely difficult to finish reading it. I desperately didn't want to finish it, but it's important to read books you dislike, by people you disagree with, if only to sharpen your arguments against them.

I hated this book for several reasons, one is for how Piper takes things out of context right and left. Now, every author who writes about the Bible cherry-picks to some extent. The Bible is very long, and there is no way to write about everything that is in it, you have to limit the extent of what you are focusing on. However, when you are limiting your focus, you can't just completely ignore things that contradict the philosophical construct you are building, and Piper does exactly that. His basic idea is that Christians should live a 'Christian Hedonistic' lifestyle, where we live for our own joy which he defines as finding pleasure in God and in doing what he wants. Okay, nothing objectionable there, except everything implied by the word 'hedonistic'. Piper has obviously faced a lot of criticism about his use of that word, as evidenced by an entire prologue justifying his use of it, two chapters, and an appendix defending himself against basically every current day theologian. (You would think if all of these people were writing well thought out and biblical critiques he would pause for a moment and reconsider his usage, but nope). He's faced a lot of criticism and he defends himself by giving a partial definition from a dictionary. Partial. Hedonism is living for the purpose of your own pleasure. Yes, that's partially the semantics of the word. But let's focus on that word 'your own' as in 'self'. Hedonism is pleasure of the self, you cannot simply sneak God into it by saying that you are pleasing yourself 'in God'. That's like saying pleasing yourself in sex. Sex is the tool by which you are pleasing yourself. God has become a tool. Piper skeeters off this by saying something to the effect that God doesn't care that you are using him as a tool because what God wills is being done, never mind the fact that it is being done in a mercenary manner. No, it cannot be mercenary because it's for God.

Not only that, but Piper is ignoring the part of hedonism where it's living for the pursuit of the pleasure of the now. There is no consideration for the future self, future others, family, nation, state, world, anything. You can't just ignore that part of the definition, which Piper does. He says we live for pleasure in God, we experience, joy, delight, satisfaction, and pleasure in God....in heaven.

No duh.

That's kind of the definition of heaven. And definitely not the definition of hedonism, I'm pretty sure that has another term, could it be 'delayed gratification'? But no, let's not use the term that everyone knows and understands, let's twist the word 'hedonism' around into something that it never meant, and will never mean and give it something new and exciting, so that we can present really basic Christian truths like 'don't steal' 'pray' and 'give tithes' a breath of fresh air.

It's not only basic English and Greek words that he uses out of context, it's the Bible itself. He takes all sorts of verses about delighting in the Lord, and being glad, and defines them out to an extreme, then ignores other verses that go against his idea. At one point he said 'If we do not find pleasure in doing God's work, then God doesn't find pleasure in us'. Pardon me, but Christ sweat blood in the garden because of his suffering in view of what he was going to have to do on the cross. He begged God to make a different path for him. Yes, he went through the crucifixion and carrying our sin for us, but he wasn't doing it while singing praises and having a grand time of it. He suffered. He told us 'take up your cross and follow me.' He never claimed following him was going to be roses and butterflies of joy. He promised it would be difficult, involve sacrifice, and persecution. He promised that there would be times of joy, and times of sadness, times of dancing, and times of crying. Piper completely ignores the suffering half of the equation.

It's not only basic biblical truths that are twisted out of alignment in this book. If you were to read this book you would think that historical theologians of all backgrounds: Barth, Augustine, Edwards, Chesterton and Lewis all agreed with Piper that 'christian hedonism' was the way to go. That seeking after the feeling of joy and pleasure was the end all and be all of Christianity. Well, maybe Barth, and Edwards would agree with him, after all, I've never read Barth, and only read 'Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God' by Edwards, so for all I know that is what they say. But Augustine? Chesterton? Lewis?!!! I've read nearly everything Lewis has ever written and he would have some exquisitely polite British barbs for the sheer audacity of Piper to so misrepresent his way of thinking about Christianity. Lewis struggled for years with his relationship with God because he never experienced transcendental joy or a conversion moment. His coming to Christ was gradual, and intellectual. God found him through his mind and through his reason and through his attraction to mythology. God is cool like that, he will approach each person as an individual, finding the chink in their armor that will open up their heart. One of Lewis' greatest points was that feelings are transient and you cannot use them to measure your relationship with God. Feelings will change. You cannot cling to them. If God blesses you with joyful worship, thank him for it, enjoy it and praise him for it, but don't try to cling to it. It will pass, and even though it passes it doesn't grant you absolution to cease worshiping.

Honestly, Piper should read a bit more and actually think about what people are saying instead of reading to justify his own ideology.

[Jenny Jo Weir · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although I usually enjoy John Piper books, this one was a bit too scholarly for me personally. It felt a little too much like a college course and it was a bit to intellectual, versus relatable. It's not a bad book, but it's definitely more for people who like research and cross referencing. I'm more of a "tell me a story" type person. Also, it's a long book, but it felt like it would take me a month to get through.

[J. Wootton · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF. So don't put too much stock in that two-star rating.

Someone gave me this book in my early teens. I tried reading it twice, and both times stopped after the introduction: it seemed to me that Piper had conveyed his complete argument there, and if I kept on reading, all I would uncover was needless elaboration.

When I first heard of the book, its core idea did indeed seem to be as "paradigm-shattering" as its hype and marketing are pleased to proclaim. And in that respect, as the vehicle that popularized a foundational Christian idea which the Calvinist / Puritan / Reformed traditions had under-emphasized almost to the point of total loss, it is a worthy work which has done many people good.

On the other hand, Piper does claim to present, as if for the first time, an insight long-present in Judeo-Christian theology that was hidden in plain sight. But it wasn't hidden at all. Many theologians, poets, psalmists, and devotees of both faiths had written much the same thing. Nor did they consider it particularly wondrous or profound. Perhaps the most striking example appears in C.S. Lewis' Reflections on the Psalms (published ~30 years before Desiring God), in which Lewis makes the exact same observation about the Westminster Catechism and claims that "a moment's thought" will reveal to anyone that worship and enjoyment of God are one and the same.

As I've gotten older and better informed about Christianity, my mind keeps straying back to the Desiring God phenomenon. And I've begun to wonder whether its popularity has less to do with how insightful it is, and more to do with how underexposed and ignorant we of non-liturgical churches have become, through successive generations of tradition-shedding, to the fullness and richness of our theological heritage.

To illustrate that thought with a personal anecdote: I'm pretty sure that despite growing up "churched," the back cover of Desiring God was the first place I encountered an actual quote from the Westminster Catechism.

[Adam Nelson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This one got to me, and I sort of expected it to. I had high expectations, actually, because Piper has developed a strong reputation as sort of a C.S. Lewis in a post-modern society. That's not to say HE'S post-modern--far from it--I'm just using that term to indicate how relevant he is. And there could not be a more accurate title for this book. It really is about what it means and sometimes what it TAKES to desire God. While this is a discussion of Christian Hedonism--a term I think Piper can be given at least partial credit for coining--it never once descends to the more common mentality in Christian writing that we can so easily "forget our troubles, come on, be happy" or, God forbid, "pack up our gloomies in a great big box and sit on the lid and laugh." No, Piper gets into the hard stuff, like is it possible for us to be at the lowest point of our suffering and still enjoy God with a radiant countenance? What is worship all about? Does God even need it, or is it a tool for US to enjoy HIM more? That one REALLY spoke to me because I too often worship with a heavy heart, never realizing how hypocritical that is. Piper cites from Jonathan Edwards a lot and seems to owe his entire ministry to him, and another of the book's marvelous achievements is to destigmatize the author of "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" by discussing the author's MUCH more numerous works on heaven and enjoying God. Edwards is more relevant today than ever, and I think every human being, if not every Christian, should at least give his discussion of God's will of command and will of decree a glance. This book affected me deeply and I recommend it for every Christian, although it's not an easy read. Piper seeks to engage your mind because that's where the battle is REALLY fought. You have to take your time with this. It's not chocolate and candy all the time. Sometimes it's broccoli and carrots--it doesn't go down easy, but it's really, really good for you.

[Zach Hollifield · Rating 5 out of 5]

Few books have been so radically paradigm shifting for my Christian walk. The truth that God’s greatest glory and my greatest joy are not only not competing realities but are bound up together has personally been a life altering discovery that has affected every facet of my life and ministry.

[Ebookwormy1 · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book. I enjoyed it. It challenged me. But, i came away feeling like i was missing something on what all the fuss was about... i felt like i failed to get it somehow...

[Alexander Wood · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely fantastic! My first JP read and hopefully it won’t be my last. Very formative, although he definitely he gets into the weeds a bit too much sometimes.

[Douglas Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great.

[Alexis Neal · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like Piper's overall point, but I'm not sure this book needed to be quite so long. Granted, I was already in agreement with Piper (after all, as Joey Tribbiani once said, there is no such thing as a truly selfless act--the only reason people do anything is, on some level, because they see it as somehow being in their own self interest) and thus was not a tough sell, but it still seems like Piper could have made his point in fewer than 300 pages (plus another 150 pages of appendices).

Still, I appreciate his encouragement to enjoy God. So many Christians obey merely out of duty, and while I think God is still glorified when we choose to obey Him in the absence of an emotional desire to do so, I don't doubt that we should seek to obey with joy. As Piper notes, the relationship between Christ and the church is pictured by human marriage, and no spouse wants to be loved only out of obligation. There will certainly be times when duty is what drives us, but if it is all that drives us, the marriage will hardly be the vibrant picture of sacrificial love that it was intended to be.

Piper does his best to address the criticism that have been offered since he first started his platform of Christian Hedonism--that is, that the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever (a slight tweaking of the Westminster Catechism), and that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him. I don't think Piper's wrong in his choice of label, nor do I think the idea itself is theologically questionable. However, I do see the potential for abuse. Piper certainly does not mean to encourage human-centered theology, or to make emotions and pleasure into gods, but I can definitely see how a philosophy of Christian Hedonism could be vulnerable to a general tendency to drift in that direction. In other words, he's not wrong, but Christian Hedonists will need to be very careful to keep God's glory--as opposed to man's pleasure--at the center of their beliefs.

All in all, it's a decent enough book, and encouraging for those of us with a tendency to prioritize obedience over emotion.

[Jaison Abraham · Rating 5 out of 5]

Before reading this book, I had become a Christian, but I was still working through this terrible thinking I had that the Christian life was supposed to be boring because what's right is always less fun than what's wrong. This is the first place I encountered the thought that the Christian life was about joy, the greatest joy that a person could have. That's a transformational thought, and for anyone who needs to hear it, this book is for you. It is dense and long, but I would say it is worth the read.

[Joseph · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5

Worth the read. If you are skeptical because of things you’ve read or heard about this book, I’d recommend skipping straight to the Epilogue where Piper lays out his responses to common objections to Christian Hedonism. He also has an Appendix on why he landed on the term and sub-title for the book, which has a shock value for a reason. My favorite chapter was the one on Worship. At certain points in the book I was confused whether the joy is something we experience now or if it’s just something we look forward to as a reward. He is saying both, but at times he was only saying one or the other. Summary of the book, from a quote at the end:

“Does Christian Hedonism put man’s pleasure above God’s glory? No. It puts man’s pleasure in God’s glory. Our quest is not merely joy. It is joy in God. And there is no way for a creature to consciously manifest the incite worth and beauty of God without delighting in him. It is better to say that we pursue our joy in God than to simply say that we pursue God. For one can pursue God in ways that do not honor him... if we want our quest to honor God, we must pursue him for the joy in fellowship with him.”

[Annie Riggins · Rating 4 out of 5]

(4.5) An expository, thorough, and perspective-shaping explanation of the Christian’s most foundational Q&A:

Q: What is the chief end of man?
A: To glorify God and enjoy him forever.

In short, “Desiring God” is a defense of delight, the textbook for joy.

[Christy Lindsay · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wish I hadn't waited so long to read this one. I know it was one of my dad's favorites and very influential, and now I see why. The 2025 audio version read by John Piper himself may have made all the difference for me as it was read with such passion and conviction.

[Jack Roberts · Rating 5 out of 5]

Desiring God was described to me as a book that is summed up in the first two chapters, and while I understand the sentiment there, it proved to be much more than that. Piper is generally known as a great speaker, and I haven’t read much by him but will say he’s also a good author. He does an excellent job of getting into specific facets of the overarching theme of this book, chapter by chapter. Even if you don’t agree with the concept of Christian hedonism, Piper seeks to make much of Christ and much of our enjoyment of him, which should be something every Christian is seeking. This book basically changed my life when I first started it, as I’d never really considered how fundamental it is to have joy in Christ. Life to me was plagued with joylessness and a false belief that Christian living was supposed to be one of boredom or suffering and hardship unto nothing. Piper lays out scripture actually calls us to suffer in a way where we experience deep seated joy because of whom we suffer for! This book was an integral part of my perspective shift on Joy. Took me a long time to finally finish it after putting it down for a long time but definitely worth the read.

[Cole Ragsdale · Rating 4 out of 5]

I felt that this was on the “must read” shelf for me so glad to have worked through it!!

I find Piper’s thesis, “glorifying God BY enjoying Him forever”, refreshing and helpful.

To see God as the ultimate treasure/the ultimate source of joy keeps us from religious games of performance and ultimate hypocrisy. Instead, it grounds us in the goal/aim of christianity: we get God.

He is not a means to an end. Contentment/Satisfaction/Joy in Him.

I never agree with everything Piper says but his allegiance is certainly not to the affluent, western Church and I appreciate the biblical fidelity throughout.

[Lindsay Tucker Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Paradigm-shifting book that has me rethinking what it means to pursue joy, deny self, and find delight in Christ. John Piper never fails to show how the Christian faith transforms both our minds and our hearts to seek God’s glory and find true satisfaction in Him. The opening chapters on worship and love, particularly about Jesus as our treasure and Someone to be delighted in (rather than merely followed out of duty), were the most impactful to me. There’s a lot more that I could say, but this is a book I will definitely be returning to and thinking on!

[Clifford Luebben · Rating 4 out of 5]

Desiring God has been one of the more influential books among American Evangelicals the past couple decades. I kind of knew it as the book that made my fellow Baptist friends Calvinist in their soteriology (either this book or Mark Driscoll, haha). Convincing people of Calvinism is not actually the point of the book, but that being my main association with the book and having been raised Calvinist by my father, I've never felt much need to read the book. However, a year or so ago I became convicted by the words of the Apostle Paul in Philippians 1:21-23 "21 For me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. 22 Now if I live on in the flesh, this means fruitful work for me; and I don’t know which one I should choose. 23 I am torn between the two. I long to depart and be with Christ—which is far better—". I knew that I did not desire Christ near so much, but I knew that I wanted to and should desire Christ that much. I had already acquired a copy of Desiring God. Since the book seemed to directly speak to the issue which the Spirit was convicting me on, I thought it time to finally read Pastor John Piper's magnum opus.

Desiring God is not a quick read. It is dense and heady. It is dense because Piper is thorough. And though it is heady it is quite clearly articulated. His writing is also quite beautiful. Piper's style is clearly influenced by all those 18th century Puritans he loves to read. He makes his case for so called "Christian Hedonism" so passionately, clearly, beautifully, thoroughly, and strongly, it is easy to see why Desiring God has become a passionate favorite of so many believers. I would recommend the book to anyone who struggles with their faith being emotionally & spiritually dry or dreary and/or anyone that is curious to key works influencing the reformed resurgence in early 21st century America.

[Joshua Bremerman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such an excellent category-creating, paradigm-shaping book (see what I did with the hyphens?)! I wish I had written reviews the first two times I read this book in the past, mostly because of how the pursuit of God's glory, with the accompanying end of our joy, has influenced me more than I will ever know. I see Christian hedonism in the Scriptures in countless places Piper does not take us, mostly because of the trajectory this book, and his teaching, has set for my life and ministry.

I truly believe any and every Christian would greatly benefit from reading, understanding, re-reading, and enjoying this book.

On this read-through, I gave more thought to how I wish Piper would have spent more time differentiating the objective disposition of joy from the subjective feeling of joy. I also think this book is 10x stronger if it includes a chapter on the church. I don't believe that latter criticism is a "I wish you would have written the book I would have written" criticism. I think that the fellowship of the saints, enjoyed face-to-face, in many ways completes the joys pursued in and through prayer, Scripture, missions, and suffering.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thorough, Biblically-based explanation for why the chief end of man if to glorify God BY enjoying Him forever. In addition, I appreciated several sections on how to respond when we don't feel the full sense of enjoyment and satisfaction in Christ that the Bible commands.

"Even in the miserable guilt we feel over our beast-like insensitivity, the Glory of God shines. If God were not gloriously desirable, why would we feel sorrowful for not feasting fully on His beauty"

1) confess the sin of joylessness, 2) pray earnestly that God would restore joy of obedience, 3) go ahead and do the duty in the hope that doing so will rekindle the delight.

"if life were a steady ascent with no dips in our affection for God, we wouldn't need to be revived" (as mentioned in many Psalms including 19 and 23)

Three stages of movement toward ideal worship: 1) full enjoyment and satisfaction in God, 2) longing and desire - we preach to ourselves not to be downcast, 3) scarcely feel any longing but repentant sorrow for having so little love - this is "where all genuine worship starts and where it often returns for a dark season" - "God is pleased with all three stages on the way to full joy in Him"

[Alex Shepard · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve been listening to John Piper for a while now, and I have heard “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him” countless times. This book is essentially explaining that phrase. Piper argues that the chief end of man is to glorify God BY enjoying Him forever. He begins by providing the biblical foundation for this, then applies it to various areas of the Christian life. This book could change your life by pointing you to God Himself as your Treasure.

“The tragedy of the world is that the echo is mistaken for the Original Shout.”

[Lydia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Took me a while to get through, but that was partly on me. Honestly a total mindset shift for me; viewing the Christian life as an opportunity to partake of the joy found in God-centered satisfaction. This is not a stoic duty, but a glorious, hedonistic chance to find more pleasure and fulfillment than we’ve ever encountered on earth.
ALSO a great “basics of the faith” book for new believers up to the reading task.

[Jonathan Barber · Rating 5 out of 5]

“God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him” - John Piper

“Jesus knew that all mankind were in the pursuit of happiness. He has directed them in the true way to it, and He tells them what they must become in order to be blessed and happy.” - Jonathan Edwards

Such a good book. First couple chapters were hard to get through, and some are definitely a little long, but thought Ch. 4-10 were great. The missions chapter is sooo good. Makes me want to go overseas. Will reread in the future.

[Lachie Macdonald · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although it sometimes felt like the book was straining too hard just to persuade me of the premise, Piper’s exploration of how his idea spills into life - practically and personally - is exceptional, especially in the later chapters.
Chapters on prayer, money and mission were particularly good.
Would really recommend, just takes a bit of work to push through certain sections.

[McRae Taul · Rating 5 out of 5]

“God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied with Him 👨🏼‍🍳👨🏼‍🍳” John Piper cooked with this one As we keep going we will get more and more joy from God. Whether we have what we think we need or not we will be satisfied because the Lord is still with us and that is when He will be most glorified.

[Grant Thinesen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Challenging, convicting, and teaching. Despite what initial conclusions one may draw from the term “Christian hedonism” (the basis for Piper’s writing), it is far from a comfortable read.

[Sam Rempe · Rating 5 out of 5]

The chief end of man is to glorify God by enjoying Him forever. Love it!

Started off as a difficult read, being my first Piper book I’ve taken on. Finished it being hard to put down. Excited to dive into more Piper works soon!

[Timothy Gubler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Required reading