[Our small group just completed a several month study of John Piper’s book, When I Don’t Desire God. My study guide to this book is now available online (Word document, pdf). Here are my introductory paragraphs – Coty]

God created mankind for a purpose: To bring glory to His Name (Isaiah 43:7). How do we glorify Him? For over twenty years, John Piper has argued that the Bible teaches that “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.” That is, we glorify God when we can say with the psalmist, “Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever” (Psalm 73:25-26). We show that God is great and precious and trustworthy and beautiful when we live and act and feel in ways that magnify His value compared to the value of the world around us. This is our calling. This is our reason for existence.

Yet we don’t wake up spontaneously each day feeling that God is great and marvelous. Quite the contrary. Most mornings we wake up feeling groggy and cranky, acting self-centered and self-absorbed. If we depend on our spontaneous feelings, most of us will spontaneously act like this world is all that is important, that our time and our comfort and our success are the overarching values in life.

So how do naturally self-centered persons live a life of joy in God?

The answer is twofold. First, by a miracle of the Holy Spirit, changing our hearts from within, so that we confess our sinfulness, our lack of delight in God, and trust that Jesus’ death on the cross paid the penalty we deserve for that sin. This is the gift of faith, of new birth.

But genuine believers in Christ Jesus still generally wake up groggy, cranky, self-centered, and self-absorbed. The Bible does not teach that we are born again and then live happily ever after with continual joy in God. Instead, believers are commanded to “Rejoice in the Lord always!” (Philippians 4:4); believers are commanded to “Be transformed through the renewing of your minds” (Romans 12:2); believers are commanded to “Know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge” (Ephesians 3:19). We are dependent upon God for any spiritual good (John 15:5); yet our dependence is not passive. We are actively dependent. We must fight to fulfill the command to rejoice in the Lord. We must fight for joy.

That is the theme of John Piper’s 2004 book, When I Don’t Desire God: How to Fight for Joy. As explanation for the purpose of the book, Piper quotes Augustine:

I was astonished that although I now loved you . . . I did not persist in enjoyment of my God. Your beauty drew me to you, but soon I was dragged away from you by my own weight and in dismay I plunged again into the things of this world . . . as though I had sensed the fragrance of the fare but was not yet able to eat it.

This is the air we breathe. This is where most Christians live most of the time. We do not rejoice in the Lord always. Yet we must.

When we find ourselves not rejoicing in Him, how should we respond? Should we question our faith?

This book is extraordinarily helpful in this regard. Piper begins by giving us the best introduction in all of his writings to our obligation to delight in God. He shows that the Bible tells us not to expect this delight to come automatically, just as constant joy in marriage does not come automatically. Instead, we are to fight for joy.

The rest of the book carefully shows what this fight for joy looks like, pointing time again to Scripture as our guide. The bottom line is simple to summarize: Immerse yourself in the Word! Pray! See God in the world around you! But Piper carefully nuances those instructions, discussing both why they are difficult to follow, and the biblical help to using them effectively.

For the last several months, our small group has been going through this book. In the process, I have developed a study guide that supplements the book.

Desiring God has a study guide online that contains questions on each book chapter, along with some questions from the video available on DVD.

This study guide is quite different. Rather than help you understand the book, this study guide aims to help you initially to interact with key biblical texts on the topic, prior to reading Piper. Then, when you read the chapter, you are already familiar with some of the texts, and, like a good Berean, are in position to assess “if these things are so” (Acts 17:10-11).

I encourage you to read this book, and to consider using the study guide as you do so. Ideally, go through the study guide together with a friend.

We are all in a fight for joy. God offers us the greatest joy imaginable in Him – and then He commands us to pursue that joy. Will you fight well – for your joy?

Fighting with you to delight in Jesus above all the world has to offer,

Coty