Tag: Spiritual Renewal

“All Life As Worship”, by John Piper (Spiritual Renewal, Abundant Heart, Will of God)

Posted on by Linda Willows

All Life Is Worship, by John Piper

In the first message on worship three weeks ago the main point was, first, that in the New Testament there is a stunning indifference to place and external form: “Neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship God, but in spirit and in truth” (John 4:21–23). Not in Samaria but in spirit; and not in Jerusalem but in truth. And, second, there is a radical intensification of worship as an inner experience, “This people honors me with their lips but their heart is far from me” (Matthew 15:8). Worship is real, authentic experience in the heart with God, or it is nothing.

The Key to Praising Christ Is Prizing Him

Then two weeks ago in the second message, I tried to show what the vital essence of that inner experience of worship is. And I argued from Philippians 1:20–21 that it is a cherishing of Christ as gain, or a being satisfied with God in all that he is for us in Jesus. Paul said that his expectation was that he would magnify Christ by life or by death, because for him to live was Christ and to die was gain. So we magnify Christ in death and in life by counting him to be more gain than anything the world can offer. The key to praising Christ is prizing Christ. Christ is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.

Worship Service — Being Served by God

Then last week, over at Bethel you may not have thought we were continuing our series on worship, but we were. It is not insignificant that what we do on Sunday mornings are called worship “services.” What do we mean, “services”? What is a “worship service”? And my point last week from Acts 17:25 and Mark 10:45 was that “God is not served by human hands as though he needed anything, but he himself gives to everyone life and breath and everything.” And, “Christ came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Whatever else a worship “service” is, it must first and foremost be served by God.

“Whatever else a worship ‘service’ is, it must first and foremost be served by God.”

This is simply a way of underlining the lesson from the week before. God is magnified when we cherish him as gain above all things, and come to him tell him that and to find more of him. God serves us by giving life and breath and everything about himself that goes to the deepest recesses of our hearts. We worship first and foremost by thirsting and hungering after God above all things. And that means that we worship first and foremost by being served by God. It is a worship service, because the service starts with God’s serving us what we so desperately need, namely, himself.

We will come back to that in the weeks to come.

Connecting All of Life with Worship

But this morning we are picking up on another point from last Sunday and the Sunday before. Namely this: if the vital essence of that inner experience we call worship is a being satisfied in God or a cherishing Christ as gain above all things, this accounts for why Romans 12:1–2 portrays all of life as worship. You remember that I asked last week, “Well, what is the Christian life if God cannot be served by human hands but loves to serve us? What does life look like?” And the answer would seem to be that we get up in the morning and we get our hearts fixed on Christ. We go to him and renew our satisfaction in him through his word. And then we enter the day seeking to express and increase that satisfaction in all that God is for us in Jesus.

Let’s look at Romans 12:1–2, which connects all of life with worship.

Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.

A Sacrifice That Lives and Moves and Does Things

So verse one says that presenting your bodies to God as a living and holy sacrifice is worship. Now, what is this referring to? A sacrifice was usually a dead body, not a living one, so he says “living” to make sure we know he doesn’t mean literal human sacrifice. A sacrifice was usually laid on the altar and parts of it were eaten by the priests and that was the end of the animal. It had no more existence. But that’s not what Paul means, because at least three times in Romans 6 (verses 13, 16, 19) he speaks of presenting our bodies or our members to God like this, and in every case it is so that our members — our arms and legs and tongues, eyes and ears and sexual organs would become instruments of righteousness. So the sacrifice is not only living, it is moving about and doing things in the world.

So how is it a sacrifice? And practically how do you present your bodies to God as sacrifices? I think the best answer is to see the connection between verses 1 and 2. My suggestion is that verse 2 is the realistic explanation of the more symbolic verse 1. Verse 1 talks about sacrifices and worship. Verse 2 talks about your mind being renewed and doing the will of God.

The explicit link to show you that Paul is thinking this way is the repetition of the word “acceptable” in verses 1 and 2. Verse 1: “Present your bodies . . . holy and acceptable to God.” Verse 2: Use your renewed mind to prove what is the will of God, what is good, acceptable and perfect. So there is probably a close link between offering your body to God as an acceptable sacrifice to God, and doing the acceptable will of God.

Not Conformed, but Transformed

So if verse 2 is likely a realistic explanation of the symbolic picture of verse 1, let’s look at it for a moment. There is a negative command and a positive one: negatively, don’t be conformed to this world; positively, be transformed. Not conformed, transformed. Devote your life as a Christian to being changed. Don’t settle in at the level of transformation you now have. Oh, how many Christians throw away their birthright by coasting. Be transformed! It’s present tense, ongoing, continual growth in un-conforming yourself to the world.

But how does this happen? What is involved? Does it mean we should just study what the world wears and watches and listens to and buys and plays, and then do the opposite? Well there will be a difference at most of those levels probably, but that’s not what the text focuses on, is it? It says, “Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” The focus is not first on getting the outside of the cup cleaned up, but on getting the inside cleaned up. In other words, transformation and non-conformity on the outside must flow from a new mind. Be transformed in the renewing of your mind.

So you might say, “Okay that means we must learn to think differently than the world thinks, and that will transform us from the inside out.” Well, that is true. But there is a word in verse 2 to show us that it is not the whole truth, and may not even be the main truth — depending on what you mean by “thinking.”

What is the function of the mind according to verse 2? What is the goal of a renewed mind? Right thinking is surely essential. If you think illogically, you will probably live badly. For example, you might think something like this: “Premise 1: Most TV ads entice me to want things that I don’t need. Premise 2: Watching more TV causes me to see more such TV ads. Conclusion: Therefore the more TV I watch the less I will be enticed to want things I don’t need.” That is simply illogical thinking and it will cause you to live badly if you don’t think better than that.

Prove and Approve

But that is not what verse 2 stresses. There is a very crucial word that we have to get right. The NASB says that our renewed mind is so that we may “prove what the will of God is.” The key word is “prove.” It is a tremendously important word. It has two implications: one is the idea of testing and proving something’s value. And the other idea is the capacity to assess it and approve of a value when you see it. It is very hard in English to bring out both these ideas with one word. The NIV does it in fact by using two words. It refers to the renewing of your mind, then says, “Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is.” That is the full idea. Test and approve.

“The root issue is more than right thinking. It is right valuing.”

So what is the root issue in verse 2? The root issue is more than right thinking. It is right valuing. Not just right proving, but right approving. Not just right testing, but treasuring. Let me see if I can help you see the difference like this. It would be possible, perhaps to teach an uneducated person to recognize some of the traits of gold without his knowing how valuable gold is. So you might give him a job panning gold with you in a stream and pay him a dollar an hour while he accurately tests the yellow stones and tosses thousands of dollars worth of gold nuggets into your bag.

That is not the kind of renewal Paul is talking about. He is not saying: read enough books or listen to enough tapes or sermons so that you can spot a good deed when you see it and then work up the discipline to do it. He is saying, be renewed so deeply in your mind that you not only can test and spot gold when you see it, but also love gold — approve gold, treasure gold. That’s what the word means. (See Romans 1:28, 14:22; 1 Corinthians 16:3.)

Now you can see that the renewal involved is more than a logic lesson. If you want to find out if a certain material is sweet, you might reason logically: it is brown, gooey, comes from a beehive, crystallizes if you drop water in it, and makes the eyes of a two-year-old light up if you put it on toast. Therefore, you infer, it must be honey, and honey is sweet. That is not the main way Romans 12:2 means for you to find the will of God. The way to know if this material is sweet, is by the power of taste, not logic.

Renewed in the Spirit of Your Mind

Ephesians 4:23 has the closest parallel to this verse and there Paul says, “Be renewed in the spirit of your mind.” That is a very strange phrase, “the spirit of your mind.” I think it means something like the capacity of your mind to taste the spirit of a thing. One of the reasons some simple, uneducated people live much more holy and upright lives than some Christians who are very educated is that their minds are far more deeply renewed. That is, they are so renewed that they can taste, or you might say smell, the rottenness of a temptation way before others and turn away before the least contamination happens. And they can taste and smell a beautiful opportunity for love before others see it coming.

In other words, mind-renewal is a deep spiritual change in how the mind assesses things and values things. In Ephesians 4:18 Paul says that ignorance (of mind) is rooted in hardness of heart. So if the mind is going to be wise and discerning about the will of God, the heart must be soft and susceptible to spiritual reality. In other words, the renewal Paul is calling for is profound, and deeper than any mere mental effort can achieve. This is why prayer is utterly essential. The constant prayer of the Christian is, “Open my eyes that I may see” (Psalm 119:18); and, “Let the eyes of my heart be enlightened” (Ephesians 1:18); and, “Cause me, O Lord, to taste and see that you are good” (Psalm 34:8). In other words, God must do the renewing through his word and Spirit.

A Profoundly Renewed Mind

Now let’s step back and see what Romans 12:1–2 looks like with this insight. The root of Christian living in verse 2 is a profoundly renewed mind. It doesn’t just think clearly, but assesses truly and values accurately and approves strongly and treasures passionately what is good, acceptable and perfect. This is utterly relevant to our daily lives because 95 percent of the things we do during the day, we do without any extended logical reflection. We just act spontaneously out of the spirit of the mind that is in us (Ephesians 4:23) — or as Jesus said, out of the abundance of our heart (Matthew 12:34). So to live the Christian life with any authenticity we must be in the process of a deep renewal deep beneath right thinking.

Then verse 2 says that this deep renewal of the way we approve and assess and value reality leads us to a transformed life that is not conformed to the world. Now the non-conformity is not just external and forced, but internal and natural and free. It flows from our new values and assessments and where our treasure is. But it does change us externally and put us out of conformity with the world.

We find ourselves doing things that Paul calls the “will of God.” God has a pattern of life that he calls us to live that accords with new powers of approving what is good and beautiful and true, and new values and new treasures. There are good things, acceptable things, perfect things — different ways of talking about what God calls us to do in different contexts.

Now how does this relate to verse 1? How does this relate to the living sacrifice of our bodies offered to God, which is our spiritual worship? I think it is simply a way of describing what that offering of worship is. What verse 2 describes is a living sacrifice because in the renewal of our minds a whole way of tasting and assessing and approving and valuing and treasuring the world dies. We are, as Paul says, “crucified to the world and the world is crucified to us” (Galatians 6:14).

So the renewal is a dying of old values and the coming to life of new ones. It is the dying of old ways of treasuring television and food and money, and the awakening of new spiritual taste buds.

God Is My All-Satisfying Treasure

So our spiritual worship is to come to God each day and say: “O God, there is nothing that I want more than to approve what is most worthy, and value what is most valuable, and treasure what is most precious and admire what is most beautiful and hate what is most evil and abhor what is most ugly. I reckon myself dead to all that is unspiritual and worldly and deadening to my soul. Renew me, O my God. Awaken spiritual capacities of right assessment.”

And then we say, “And take me, body and soul, and make me the instrument of your glory in the world. Let the renewal you are working from within show on the outside. This is my spiritual worship. To show the world that you are my all-satisfying treasure.”

“The essence of worship is a being satisfied in God and cherishing of Christ as gain.”

There it is. Now we are back at the beginning. The essence of worship is a being satisfied in God and cherishing of Christ as gain. Romans 12:1–2 are not saying anything different. This is what it means to have a renewed mind. The renewed mind perceives and approves and treasures and cherishes the will of God (and thus transforms all of life), because it first and foremost perceives, and approves and treasures and cherishes God.

And doing the will of God is the outshining of God in his glory. “Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good deeds and give glory to your father in heaven” (Matthew 5:16). All of life is the outshining of what you truly value and cherish and treasure. Therefore, all of life is worship. Either of God, or something else.

Therefore, be transformed in the renewal of your mind. Cherish God in all his works and all his ways. Reckon the old mind dead and offer yourself to God as a living sacrifice that he may put you on display by the outshining of his worth and his value in your life. Worship him with your life.

John Piper (@JohnPiper) is founder and teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & 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 Providence.

“Here, in Far Home”, a worship poem from L.Willows (Sovereign God, A New Day, New Heaven New Earth)

Posted on by Linda Willows

Here in Far Home

Walk with me, linger, in season’s sweet hue,
Throughout life’s fullness, like diamonds in the dew.
Mornings will come, far from this view,
warmed by a Sun that will give us renew.

Stilled by the dawn, silent and hushed,
Our prayers lift upward, like dreams forward rushed.
God of all morrows, Time listens in;
here we walk forward, framed by His Begin.

Walk into His season, walk with me now,
Yet cherish this moment, the one God allows.
Linger to shed His bounty of Love,
here in our far home near Heaven above.

© 2020 Linda Willows

Isaiah 46:9-10- “Remember the former things of old; for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose.”

2 Peter 3:13 -“But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.”

Psalm 84:11-“For the Lord God is a sun and shield; the Lord bestows favor and honor. No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly.”

“The Renewed Mind and The Holy Spirit”, from John Piper (True Freedom, Christ Exalting Truth)

Posted on by Linda Willows

The Renewed Mind and How to Have It

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. (Romans 12:1–2)

As I have thought and prayed about these verses, it seems to me that there are two more very large issues we should deal with before moving on to verse 3. I would like to give a week to each of them.

“The Will of God”

One, which I hope to deal with next week, is the meaning of the term “the will of God.” Verse 2 says that we are to discern what is “the will of God.” It’s a very common phrase and I think that sometimes, when we use it, we may not know what we are talking about. That is not spiritually healthy. If you get into the habit of using religious language without knowing what you mean by it, you will increasingly become an empty shell. And many alien affections move into empty religious minds which have language but little or wrong content.

The term “the will of God” has at least two and possibly three biblical meanings. First, there is the sovereign will of God, that always comes to pass without fail. Second, there is the revealed will of God in the Bible — do not steal, do not lie, do not kill, do not covet — and this will of God often does not come to pass. And third, there is the path of wisdom and spontaneous godliness — wisdom where we consciously apply the word of God with our renewed minds to complex moral circumstances, and spontaneous godliness where we live most of our lives without conscious reflection on the hundreds of things we say and do all day. Next week we need to sort this out and ask what Paul is referring to in Romans 12:2.

“By the Renewal of Your Mind”

But today I want to focus on the phrase in Romans 12:2, “by the renewal of your mind.” Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” We are perfectly useless as Christ-exalting Christians if all we do is conform to the world around us. And the key to not wasting our lives with this kind of success and prosperity, Paul says, is being transformed. “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed.”

That word is used one time in all the gospels, namely, about Jesus on the mountain of transfiguration (the mountain of “transformation” — same word, metemorphōthē): “And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became white as light” (Matthew 17:2; Mark 9:2).

More Than External Transformation

I point this out for one reason: to make the point that the nonconformity to the world does not primarily mean the external avoidance of worldly behaviors. That’s included. But you can avoid all kinds of worldly behaviors and not be transformed. “His face shown like the sun, and his clothes became white as light!” Something like that happens to us spiritually and morally. Mentally, first on the inside, and then, later at the resurrection on the outside. So Jesus says of us, at the resurrection: “Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father” (Matthew 13:43).

“We are perfectly useless as Christians if all we do is conform to the world around us.”

Transformation is not switching from the to-do list of the flesh to the to-do list of the law. When Paul replaces the list — the works — of the flesh, he does not replace it with the works of the law, but the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:19–22).

The Christian alternative to immoral behaviors is not a new list of moral behaviors. It is the triumphant power and transformation of the Holy Spirit through faith in Jesus Christ — our Savior, our Lord, our Treasure. “[God] has made us sufficient to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life” (2 Corinthians 3:6). So transformation is a profound, blood-bought, Spirit-wrought change from the inside out.

Freedom to Be Enslaved to Christ

This is why the Christian life — though it is utterly submitted (Romans 8:7; 10:3), even enslaved (Romans 6:18, 22) to the revealed will of God — is described in the New Testament as radically free.

“Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Corinthians 3:17). “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery” (Galatians 5:1). You are free in Christ, because when you do from the inside what you love to do, you are free — if what you love to do is what you ought to do. And that’s what transformation means: When you are transformed in Christ you love to do what you ought to do. That’s freedom.

Renewal as an Essential means of Transformation

And in Romans 12:2, Paul now focuses on one essential means of transformation — “the renewal of your mind.” “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind.” Oh, how crucial this is!

  • If you long to break loose from conformity to the world,
  • If you long to be transformed and new from the inside out,
  • If you long to be free from mere duty-driven Christianity and do what you love to do because what you love to do is what you ought to do,
  • If you long to offer up your body as a living sacrifice so that your whole life becomes a spiritual act of worship and displays the worth of Christ above the worth of the world,

then give yourself with all your might to pursuing this — the renewal of your mind. Because the Bible says, this is the key to transformation. “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind.”

What’s wrong with the human mind? Why does our mind need renewing? And what does this renewal look like? And how can we pursue and enjoy this renewal?

The Problem with Our Minds

There are many who think that the only problem with the human mind is that it doesn’t have access to all the knowledge it needs. So education becomes the great instrument of redemption — personal and social. If people just got more education they would not use their minds to invent elaborate scams, and sophisticated terrorist plots, and complex schemes for embezzling, and fast-talking, mentally nimble radio rudeness. If people just got more education!

The Bible has a far more profound analysis of the problem. In Ephesians 4:23 Paul uses a striking phrase to parallel Romans 12:2. He says, “Be renewed in the spirit of your minds.” Now, what in the world is that? “The spirit of your mind.” It means at least this: the human mind is not a sophisticated computer managing data, which it then faithfully presents to the heart for appropriate emotional responses.

The mind has a “spirit.” In other words, our mind has what we call a “mindset.” It doesn’t just have a view, it has a viewpoint. It doesn’t just have the power to perceive and detect; it also has a posture, a demeanor, a bearing, an attitude, a bent. “Be renewed in the spirit of your mind.”

“The problem with our minds is not merely that we are finite, but that we are fallen.”

The problem with our minds is not merely that we are finite, and don’t have all the information. The problem is that our minds are fallen. They have a spirit, a bent, a mindset that is hostile to the absolute supremacy of God. Our minds are bent on not seeing God as infinitely more worthy of praise than we are, or the things we make or achieve.

This is what we saw last week in Romans 1:28, “Since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind.” This is who we are by nature. We do not want to see God as worthy of knowing well and treasuring above all things. You know this is true about yourself because of how little effort you expend to know him, and because of how much effort it takes to make your mind spend any time getting to know God better.

The Bible says we have “exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man” (Romans 1:23). And the image in the mirror is the mortal image we worship most.

That’s what’s wrong with our minds. This illumines the relationship between verses 1 and 2 of Romans 12. Verse 1 says that we should present our bodies — that is, our whole active life — as a living sacrifice which is our spiritual service of worship. So the aim of all life is worship. That is, we are to use our bodies — our whole lives — to display the worth of God and all that he is for us in Christ. Now it makes perfect sense when verse 2 says that, in order for that to happen, our minds must be renewed. Why? Because our minds are not by nature God-worshiping minds. They are by nature self-worshiping minds. That is the spirit of our minds.

Two Other Biblical Diagnoses

Now before I turn to the remedy and how we find the renewal of mind God demands, consider two other biblical diagnoses of the problem. Consider the way Peter describes our mind-problem in 1 Peter 1:13–14, “Prepar[e] . . . your minds for action. . . . Do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance.” There is an ignorance of God — a willful suppression of the truth of God (Romans 1:18) — that makes us slaves to many passions and desires that would lose their power if we knew God as we ought (cf. 1 Thessalonians 4:5). “The passions of your former ignorance.” Paul calls these passions, “deceitful desires” (Ephesians 4:22).

They are life-ruining, worship-destroying desires, and they get their life and their power from the deceit of our minds. There is a kind of knowledge of God — a renewal of mind — that transforms us because it liberates us from the deceit and the power of alien passions.

The other biblical diagnosis is in Ephesians 4:17–18, “You must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart.”

Paul takes us deeper than Peter here. He penetrates beneath the “futile mind” and the “darkened understanding” and the willful “ignorance” and says that it is all rooted in “the hardness of their heart.” Here is the deepest disease, infecting everything else. Our mental suppression of liberating truth is rooted in our hardness of heart. Our hard hearts will not submit to the supremacy of Christ, and therefore our blind minds cannot see the supremacy of Christ (see John 7:17).

The Holy Spirit Renews the Mind

This brings us finally to the remedy and how we obey Romans 12:2, “Be transformed in the renewal of your mind.” First, before we can do anything, a double action of the Holy Spirit is required. And then we join him in these two actions. The reason I say the Holy Spirit is required is because this word “renewal” in Romans 12:2 is only used one other place in all the Greek Bible, namely, Titus 3:5 where Paul says this: “[God] saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit.”

There’s the word “renewal” which we’ve seen is so necessary. And it is renewal “of the Holy Spirit.” The Spirit renews the mind. It is first and decisively his work. We are radically dependent on him. Our efforts follow his initiatives and enablings.

The Holy Spirit’s Double Work

Now, what is the double work that he must do to renew our minds so that all of life becomes worship? 2 Corinthians 3:18 sets the stage for the answer:

And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.

What does the Spirit do to “transform” us into the image of the God-exalting Son of God? He enables us to “behold the glory of the Lord.” This is how the mind is renewed — by steadfastly gazing at the glories of Christ for what they really are.

But to enable us to do that, the Spirit must do a double work. He must work in two directions: from the outside in and from the inside out. He must work from the outside in by exposing the mind to Christ-exalting truth. That is, he must lead us to hear the gospel, to read the Bible, to study Christ-exalting writings of great, spiritual men, and to meditate on the perfections of Christ.

This is exactly what our great enemy does not want us to do according to 2 Corinthians 4:4, “The god of this world [Satan] has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ.” Because to see that for what it really is, Paul says, will renew the mind and transform the life and produce unending worship.

“The Spirit renews the mind. It is first and decisively his work.”

And the Spirit must work from the inside out, breaking the hard heart that blinds and corrupts the mind. The Spirit must work from the outside in, through Christ-exalting truth, and from the inside out, through truth-embracing humility. If he only worked from the outside in, by presenting Christ-exalting truth to our minds but not breaking the hard heart and making it humble, then the truth would be despised and rejected. And if he only humbled the hard heart, but put no Christ-exalting truth before the mind, there would be no Christ to embrace and no worship would happen.

What Then Shall We Do?

What then do we do in obedience to Romans 12:2, “Be transformed in the renewal of your mind”? We join the Holy Spirit in his precious and all-important work. We pursue Christ-exalting truth and we pray for truth-embracing humility.

Listen to rich expositions of the “gospel of the glory of Christ.” Read your Bible from cover to cover always in search of the revelation of the glory of Christ. Read and ponder the Bible-saturated, Christ-exalting writings of great, spiritual men and women. And form the habit of meditating on the perfections of Christ. And in it all pray, pray, pray that the Holy Spirit will renew your mind, that you may desire and approve the will of God, so that all of life will become worship to the glory of Christ.

May the mind of Christ, my Savior,
Live in me from day to day,
By His love and power controlling
All I do and say.

May the Word of God dwell richly
In my heart from hour to hour,
So that all may see I triumph
Only through His power.

May the peace of God my Father
Rule my life in everything,
That I may be calm to comfort
Sick and sorrowing.

May the love of Jesus fill me
As the waters fill the sea;
Him exalting, self abasing,
This is victory.

May I run the race before me,
Strong and brave to face the foe,
Looking only unto Jesus
As I onward go.

May His beauty rest upon me,
As I seek the lost to win,
And may they forget the channel,
Seeing only Him.

(Kate B. Wilkinson, “May the Mind of Christ, My Savior”)

John Piper (@JohnPiper) is founder and teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & 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 What Is Saving Faith?