Audio Transcript

God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him. It’s our slogan. We love it. Many of you love it. Its nice balance makes it easy to memorize. Its nice rhythm paces itself off the tongue. And most importantly, it’s freighted with meaning. In that motto, we summarize God’s plan for his creation, his purpose for our lives, and the aim of Desiring God’s daily ministry labors around the globe. God’s glory and our joy in God are not two things, but one beautiful goal. And so we say it on repeat: God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.

And our motto turns 36 years old today.

On this anniversary, I want to break into the APJ feed with a special bonus episode, a short one, with the recent discovery.

To do it, let me set the stage. Exactly 36 years ago, Pastor John was the 42-year-old senior pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis. And he was in Chicago in September of 1988 for a four-part seminar at Trinity Baptist Church in Wheaton, Illinois. The seminar was on Christian Hedonism. And he delivered the sessions in four consecutive evenings at seven o’clock, Sunday to Wednesday. Added to his itinerary in the area, Pastor John also agreed to preach the Monday morning chapel message at Wheaton College, his alma mater. And that’s where history was made.

Pastor John titled his Wheaton chapel message “God’s Memorial: Our Joy,” a celebration of Isaiah 55:12–13. The joy of God’s people is a memorial to God. His people’s happiness is a monument to his own honor. And it was here, at the conclusion of his chapel message, that the motto made its first public appearance. Here it is:

Do you see what this implies about the character of God? It implies that his desire for his people to be satisfied and his desire for his name to be glorified come together as one. The renown or the memorial that God makes for himself is your happiness. God is the kind of God who is pursuing his own glory in your joy. The implication of that is that when you are most satisfied in God, he is most glorified in you.1

Beautiful. “When you are most satisfied in God, he is most glorified in you.” Now, it’s still a little rough (and backward). But it’s public. Delivered for the first time in this chapel message at Wheaton College on September 19, 1988 — 36 years ago today.

Okay, but how do we know this was the first mention of the motto? That’s what I asked, too. So let’s investigate this for a moment.

First, just a month earlier, Piper had finished preaching a five-part sermon series through Isaiah 55 to his congregation in Minneapolis2 — a precious chapter that invites all thirsty souls to come to the satisfying fountain of the living God. He promised his church, “If you memorize Isaiah 55, it will change your life.” And so, he had his church staff and family memorizing the chapter all summer. He concluded the summer series with this same text, Isaiah 55:12–13, which would be the text he draws his Wheaton chapel message from a month later. But in his Bethlehem Baptist Church version of the sermon earlier in the summer, Piper never said anything resembling the motto.3

“If you try to abandon the quest for satisfaction and joy and happiness in God, you strive against the glory of God.”

Second, his monumental book on Christian Hedonism, the book Desiring God, had already been written and published and was on bookstore shelves 19 months prior to the Wheaton College chapel in September 1988. In fact, by the time he arrived in Chicago, his four-part evening series was already billed, according to the promotional flier, as featuring “Dr. John Piper, author of the best-selling book Desiring God.” But as well as his new book had been spreading, two things are missing from the first edition: Isaiah 55 and the motto.

Fresh thoughts on Christian Hedonism continued to build for him as he labored to say things better and more clearly and in ways easier to remember. So, back to Chicago. Recall he’s teaching at Trinity Baptist Church in the evenings. Monday evening, the same evening of the Wheaton chapel message, here’s Pastor John:

I think I said in the chapel this morning over at Wheaton that, uh, when we are most satisfied in God, he is most glorified in us. That’s — that’s one of the most crisp statements I can think of to capture Christian Hedonism.4

There it is again — a mention back to his Wheaton chapel that morning, but still not proof that the motto was coined there. Let’s move to the next evening.

Now it’s Tuesday evening, September 20, 1988. He mentions the line again. But note his struggle in drawing it from memory.

And that led us to last night’s message, which was then — the implication would be if we would glorify God most, we must delight in him most. And if I can remember, the sentence that we used both in the Wheaton Chapel and last night was, um, uh . . . I won’t get it just right. Uh, if you . . . when you, when you, when you are most satisfied in God, he is most glorified in you. Yes, that’s the sentence. When you are most satisfied in God, he is most glorified in you. Therefore, if you try to abandon the quest for satisfaction and joy and happiness in God, you strive against the glory of God. You put yourself in opposition to his eternal purposes to exalt his own name.5

The motto isn’t easily recalled — not yet. It’s fresh. It’s not something he’s gotten used to — further evidence that it’s new to him.

Then comes a radio interview. Chris Fabry invited Pastor John to his Chicago-based show, OpenLine. This interview is conducted on September 28, 1988, nine days after the Wheaton chapel. And it’s a radio conversation about Christian Hedonism. In it, Fabry is trying to put all the pieces together — God’s glory and our joy. About fifteen minutes into the conversation, Fabry attempts to restate Christian Hedonism in his own words. The concept seems radical, he says.

Because what you’re saying is really transforming our view of what God is out to do. In salvation, God then is not in the business of saving us because we need to be saved or because he wants us to be saved, but he’s doing it for his own glory. Then, as we respond to him, we are responding to that salvation message, not necessarily solely because we want to get away from hell or want to spend eternity with God. We do it for his glory.

That’s muddled, and understandably so. The glories of Christian Hedonism are hard to grasp at first, and people struggle to understand this key point. It’s not simply about God being glorified, but about him being glorified by our joy in him. Here is Pastor John’s immediate reply, an attempt to make Christian Hedonism clearer, using one new sentence that he crafted exactly for a moment like this one.

The genius of Christian Hedonism, and at least what made it a revolutionizing thing for me, was to discover that I am never faced with that alternative. That is, I don’t think . . . the Bible never poses me with the dilemma: God’s glory versus my happiness. Here’s the way I put it now — and I just hit upon this last week as I was thinking. The sentence I like to use to sum it up now is this: “God is most glorified in me when I am most satisfied in God.” Now, if that’s true, if God’s glory rises in proportion to my delight in him, I can never play off his glory against my delight. The more I delight in him, the more glory he gets from me.6

“I just hit upon this last week.” There it is — confirmation of this recent discovery of one pithy statement to capture the heart of Christian Hedonism, forged to help people get the point of Christian Hedonism. And a clear callback to the Wheaton chapel message nine days earlier. “When you are most satisfied in God, he is most glorified in you.”

In those nine days, Pastor John has reversed the order. Up to this point, it was “When you are most satisfied in God, he is most glorified in you.” Now, “God is most glorified in me when I am most satisfied in God.” It gets two more tweaks in due time. The double mention of God becomes one, and the motto is made collective, from “God is most glorified in me when I am most satisfied in God” to its final form today: “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.”

And there it is: John Piper’s favorite motto, first delivered in his Wheaton College chapel message on September 19, 1988 — 36 years ago today.

The road to the pastorate is filled with men who had hoped to arrive a long time ago. Many years have passed since they first felt the seed of a desire to shepherd Christ’s church. But for any number of reasons — life circumstances, personal immaturity, the need for training — no church has called them as shepherd. Not yet.

I think of one friend whose aspiration has quietly burned for over a decade. I think of another man, barely out of his teens, who recently started pursuing the pastorate and likely has years ahead of him. I think of my former self, traveling that road through my entire twenties. Such men may feel ambitions as big as Paul’s — but then remember, with a sigh, that they are not even a Timothy yet.

What can a man do on that road, especially when he can’t see the end of it? Well, quite a lot. Bobby Jamieson offers a couple of dozen ideas in his helpful book The Path to Being a Pastor. My colleague Marshall Segal boils those down to seven worthy ambitions. But lately my mind has been focused on a passage from Paul to Timothy. Timothy was already a pastor at the time of Paul’s writing, but he was a young pastor, not far removed from the road of aspiring men. And Paul’s counsel applies wonderfully to those preparing to join him.

“Do we enjoy Jesus before we preach him, and preach him because we enjoy him?”

We might capture the heart of Paul’s burden in 1 Timothy 4:6–16 with the words of verse 15: “Practice these things, immerse yourself in them, so that all may see your progress.” Let them see your progress, Timothy. Don’t grow discouraged. Don’t remain stuck. Instead, by God’s grace, gain ground. Hone your character. Develop your competency. Become more godly, more fruitful, more zealous, more skilled. Make progress — the kind of progress that others can see.

To that end, consider a two-part plan: Train privately. Practice publicly.

Train Privately

Most of Paul’s commands in 1 Timothy 4:6–16 focus on Timothy’s public ministry. “Command and teach” (verse 11); “set the believers an example” (verse 12); “devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching” (verse 13); and so on. At the same time, Paul knew just how easily public ministry could outpace private piety. He knew how tempting it could be to “keep a close watch on . . . the teaching” without keeping a close watch “on yourself” (verse 16).

It is frightfully possible to preach in public what you disobey in private. It is sadly common for men, even pastors-in-training, to lose delight in God’s word, and neglect the prayer closet. So, behind, before, and alongside Timothy’s public ministry, Paul says, “Train yourself for godliness” (verse 7). Explain publicly what you have experienced privately. Let all your teaching be plucked from the orchard of your soul. Remember that all God-pleasing progress in public flows from God-centered progress in private.

Enjoy His Words

“Train yourself for godliness”: the command takes us into an athletic spirituality, a pursuit of Christ that doesn’t mind the uphill climb, that relishes some sweat, that is willing to beat disobedient feelings into submission. Give yourself, Timothy, to the long, gradual, difficult, joyful process of becoming more like Jesus — or what some Puritans called “the great business of godliness” (The Genius of Puritanism, 12).

Such training may take many forms, but Paul leaves no doubt about the central content of Timothy’s regimen: he would progress in godliness by “being trained in the words of the faith” (1 Timothy 4:6). Reject “deceitful spirits and teachings of demons” (verse 1); sidestep “irreverent, silly myths” (verse 7). Instead, give yourself to God’s word.

If there is a secret to public progress, surely it lies in private soul-dealings with the God who speaks. I for one have felt chastened lately by Andrew Bonar’s description of the young Robert Murray M’Cheyne, who would often ride outside town “to enjoy an hour’s perfect solitude; for he felt meditation and prayer to be the very sinews of his work” (Memoir and Remains of Robert Murray M’Cheyne, 56). Meditation and prayer are the sinews of ministry. Without them, we may have the muscle of charisma and the bones of orthodoxy, but the body hangs loose and weak; we stagger rather than run.

In one way or another, the depth of our private dealings with God will become evident in public. Our faces will shine like Moses’s — or they won’t. Our spontaneous speech and conduct will “set . . . an example” (verse 12) — or it won’t. We will hand others the ripe fruit of our own meditations — or we will deal in plastic apples and pears.

As aspiring leaders, we know God’s word forms the soul and substance of our public ministry. But over time, has our private life come to betray that conviction? Do we still read God’s word with anything like athletic obsession? Do we enjoy Jesus before we preach him, and preach him because we enjoy him? Do we treat meditation and prayer as the indispensable sinews of ministry?

Examine Your Soul

As Timothy devotes himself to “the words of the faith,” Paul calls him to turn his attention inward as well. “Keep a close watch on yourself,” he writes (1 Timothy 4:16). Timothy was an overseer of souls, but the first soul he needed to oversee was his own.

“The gifts of God are not only given, but cultivated; not only bestowed, but honed.”

Paul had spoken such words to pastors before. “Pay careful attention to yourselves,” he told the elders in Ephesus (Acts 20:28). And he had good reason to warn: “From among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things” (Acts 20:30). Pastor or not, if a man does not keep a close watch on himself, he will lose himself. He will not only fail to progress; he will regress, sometimes beyond hope. And Timothy was no exception.

So, Paul says, keep a close watch. Regularly tour the city of your heart to see if any enemies have breached the gate and now threaten the throne. Stand sentinel in your soul; know the weak spots on the walls, and study the enemies you are likely to face. Pray and then patiently review in God’s presence your speech, conduct, love, faith, purity (1 Timothy 4:12). As you read God’s word, ask him to search you and save you, to reveal you and rescue you (Psalm 139:23–24). “Lord, discipline me, correct me, expose me, confront me — and whatever it takes, keep me from destroying myself.”

True, we do not make much progress in godliness by looking inward. But we may notice the enemies that keep us from progress — enemies that, unmortified, would ruin all our progress up till now.

Practice Publicly

If private progress relates mostly to our character, public progress relates mostly to our competence. And in our passage, Paul cares about Timothy’s competence a lot. When he writes, “Practice these things, immerse yourself in them, so that all may see your progress” (1 Timothy 4:15), “these things” refers mainly to “the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching” (verse 13). Timothy was already “able to teach” (1 Timothy 3:2), but Paul wanted him to become more able, to increasingly look like “a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15).

Paul recognized in Timothy a pastoral gift (1 Timothy 4:14). But Timothy’s gift was not a static endowment: he could “neglect the gift” he had, or he could “practice” and improve it (verses 14–15). For the gifts of God are not only given, but cultivated; not only bestowed, but honed. And here men like us find hope. However gifted we may feel (or not), we are not at the mercy of our present attainments. We can handle God’s word with more care. We can apply it with more power. We can develop a greater readiness “in season and out of season” (2 Timothy 4:2). That is, as long as we practice.

Embrace Unspectacular Opportunities

Few men receive a ready-made gift of teaching, a gift with no assembly required. God’s kingdom has its occasional Spurgeons, of course, who preached better as a teenager than I ever will as an adult. But most of us become proficient only through repeated practice over years, and then most of us progress further only through more practice still. And if we’re going to practice as much as we ought — as much as Paul’s “immerse yourself” suggests (1 Timothy 4:15) — then we likely will need to embrace opportunities that seem pretty unspectacular.

We might, for example, lead a group of guys in middle-school ministry. We might pour more thought into family devotions. We might find a lonely, suffering saint, listen to his heart woes, and practice the complex art of pastoral counseling. We might gather a few men committed to exhorting and encouraging each other. We might spend time with the sermon passage before we hear it preached, developing our own ideas and applications, drafting our own outline. We might snatch up every realistic opportunity to open the Bible and say something about it.

Perhaps we feel tempted to despise these small, unspectacular opportunities. But small, unspectacular opportunities form, for most of us, the indispensable path toward progress. There is no progress without practice — and practice sometimes feels utterly ordinary.

Fail Well

Those who practice enough, of course, eventually discover an uncomfortable truth: with practice comes not only progress, but failure. Open your mouth often enough, and you’ll say something foolish. Exhort others enough, and you’ll damage a bruised reed. Counsel enough, and you’ll speak too soon or too late. Preach enough, and you’ll leave the pulpit disheartened.

In the aftermath of such moments, we may feel like practicing a little less; rather than immersing ourselves in ministry or devoting ourselves to teaching (1 Timothy 4:13, 15), we may feel like retreating to a safer place. We may want to dig a hole and bury our talents in the dirt of our failures.

Yet precisely in such moments, we need to hear Paul’s word to Timothy in verse 14: “Do not neglect the gift you have.” Yes, your effort ended in embarrassment, but do not neglect the gift you have. Yes, taking another public risk feels daunting, but do not neglect the gift you have. Yes, to fail again like that would feel shameful, but do not neglect the gift you have. In some cases, of course, repeated failure may suggest that we don’t actually have the gift we thought we did. In so many cases, however, the failure was just part of the practice.

So, hold your failures in open hands, and learn all you can from them. Remember “the words of the faith” that have been your private strength, your secret delight. Take courage that if “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners” (1 Timothy 1:15), he can certainly restore and use failures. And then get back in the pulpit, back before the small group, back on the streets, back wherever your ministry lies, and use the gift that God has given you.

And in time, all will see your progress.

Audio Transcript

Are motorcycles for fools? That’s today’s question. And we’re speaking of recreational motorcycles here, of course — their primary function in the States. And it’s really a question about providence more than anything else. Here’s the email: “Hello, Pastor John. My name is Ian, and I live in the beautiful city of San Diego. My girlfriend and I got into a discussion recently about riding motorcycles for fun. I stated that if we got married, I wouldn’t ride motorcycles because to me it feels unwise to put myself in a greater risk of dying and thus leaving her alone, or if we had kids, leaving them without their father and leaving their mother to support all of them, because riding for us is just recreational. She believes that if I died riding, it was God’s will for me to die anyways, and taking precautions, like not riding, is to live in fear, while for me it feels like a wise decision to not take that unnecessary risk when others’ livelihoods are at stake.

“I’m having trouble reconciling the sovereignty of God in our lives, but also making wise decisions. It’s true that God oversees every event that happens in our lives, regardless of our precautions, but in my mind I feel like decisions that we make will also impact our future. But aren’t crashes and misfortune in the hand of God, too, making precautions like these worthless? Am I living in fear? Or am I being prudent and wise in not wanting to ride motorcycles? Thank you, Pastor John!”

There are two sentences in Ian’s question that I think need some correction. And in the process, perhaps I can clarify a way of thinking about God’s sovereignty and our risks and our fear that will shape the way he and his girlfriend and all of us make our decisions. One of those sentences expresses Ian’s opinion, and the other one expresses his girlfriend’s opinion (at least the way he articulates it).

All-Governing Sovereignty

Let’s take Ian’s sentence first. He says, “But aren’t motorcycle crashes and misfortune in the hand of God, making precautions like these worthless?” Now, I’m not sure Ian really believes that — that God’s sovereignty over motorcycle crashes makes precautions like not riding a motorcycle worthless — because he had just said in the previous sentence, “It’s true that God oversees every event that happens in our lives regardless of our precautions. But in my mind, I feel like decisions that we make also impact our future.” So, it sounds to me like, Ian, you’re waffling. Precautions make a difference in our future, and precautions seem worthless in making a difference in view of the sovereignty of God.

So, we need to think for a minute. We need to ponder what’s going on here in that ambiguity and what is the truth here. And I think we can settle quickly that, according to the Bible, God governs the smallest details of nature and human activity — including motorcycle riding, including all accidents and non-accidents — as well as the greatest events in government and history and the universe, the solar system, the galaxies.

Jesus said, “Not one bird will fall from the sky apart from your Father’s will” (see Matthew 10:29). That’s tiny, micro providence. Proverbs 16:33: “The lot [dice] is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord.” Isaiah 40:26 says not one of the stars is out of place because of God’s power. Ephesians 1:11: “[God] works all things according to the counsel of his will.” James 4:15: “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” So, the sovereignty of God over all things is not at issue.

“The sovereignty of God over human events does not make human choices about those events worthless.”

I think Ian agrees with that given what he says. But he does not seem to be as sure that taking precautions makes any difference in the outcome of our lives if God is sovereign over everything. That’s where he seems to be waffling. He says, “But aren’t motorcycle crashes in the hand of God, making precautions worthless?” Now, the answer to that question is a clear and emphatic no; they’re not worthless. They are not. The sovereignty of God over human events does not make human choices about those events worthless.

Over Ends and Means

The reason is very simple. God not only predestined the events that he wills to come to pass, but he also predestines the means by which those events come to pass.

If God predestines that there be a building, he also predestines that there be builders who build it. If God predestines that a person not starve to death, then he also predestines that they have food and that they eat it. If God predestines that you do not fly off a mountain cliff on your motorcycle, he also predestines that you not enter the curve doing 80 miles an hour. If God predestines that a nail be driven through a two-by-four, he also predestines that someone hit it with a hammer. If God predestines that someone be saved, he also predestines that someone bring that person the gospel.

It doesn’t make any sense to speak of God’s all-governing sovereignty as if it only designed the ends and not the means to those ends. It wouldn’t be all-governing if that were the case. Why would we think that? If he governs all things, he governs all secondary causes, all means to ends.

For the loss of a nail, the shoe was lost. For the loss of the shoe, the horse was lost. For the loss of a horse, the battle was lost. For the loss of the battle, the war was lost. For the loss of the war, the nation and the kingdom was lost. Every one of those causes, secondary causes — going all the way back to the nail that fell out of the horseshoe — is in the hand of the Lord just as much as the final outcome of a nation that falls. He sets up nations, he takes down nations, and he governs the billions of causes that develop over decades to bring a nation up or take a nation down. Any one of those causes may alter the outcome of our lives, depending on whether God wills it to be so.

So, it’s just wrong to say that because God governs final outcomes, our efforts to promote or hinder those outcomes are worthless. That’s just wrong. That would be a great, unbiblical mistake. God ordains means as well as ends, and our action is part of those means. So, not riding a motorcycle is a very good way not to be killed on a motorcycle. There is a real, causal connection between not riding motorcycles and not being killed on motorcycles.

Fearless Precautions

Now, the other sentence in that question is not Ian’s statement, but the one he says his girlfriend spoke. He says, “She believes that if I died riding a motorcycle, it was God’s will for me to die anyway and taking precautions like not riding is to live in fear.” Now, there’s more than one problem with that sentence, but we’re just going to take one — namely, the one about fear. She says, “To take precautions is to live in fear.” I doubt she really said that. I think he’s reporting it not quite exactly right.

I don’t think she really believes that, because that is certainly not necessarily true. And if she’s thought about it for five seconds, she’d know it’s not necessarily true that to take precautions is to live in fear. I take precautions by locking my doors every night. I take precautions by putting the car in the garage. I take precautions by backing up my hard drive on my computer. I take precautions by wearing a seatbelt. I take precautions by praying for protection before I go to bed at night. I take precautions by having health insurance. And on and on and on.

“God ordains means as well as ends, and our action is part of those means.”

The actual experience of fear in my life is almost totally absent. I don’t even think about it. It does not dominate my life. I hardly even give a thought to those things. Fear is rarely a conscious experience in my life. So, taking precautions doesn’t have to mean that you are living under the domination of fear. I have no intention of owning a motorcycle or going skydiving, for example. I don’t give them a thought. They don’t affect my fear level at all one way or the other.

What Risks Are Right?

So, the question that Ian and his girlfriend face regarding the motorcycle is this: What risks in life are wise and loving? So, instead of answering that question, which I don’t have time to do now, I’m going to send you to APJ 1446, where I do answer that question. I spent a whole session on it. The title of that episode is “How Do I Take Risks Without Being Unwise?” And I give six criteria there for answering that question — how to be wise, how to be loving and yet take appropriate risk. Because we all do every day. Life is a risk, right? You cannot not risk.

But the two main points here are (1) the sovereignty of God does not make precautions worthless, and (2) taking precautions need not imply that we are living in the grip of fear.