The greatest enemy of hunger for God is not poison but apple pie. It is not the banquet of the wicked that dulls our appetite for heaven, but endless nibbling at the table of the world. It is not the X-rated video, but the prime-time dribble of triviality we drink in every night.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes that distractions and trivial pleasures can weaken our spiritual hunger for God.
John Piper argues that the true threats to our spiritual life are not overtly harmful things, but rather the mundane and trivial distractions of everyday life. The quote suggests that the constant engagement with worldly pleasures, like indulgent food or mindless entertainment, can dull our desire for deeper spiritual fulfillment, leading us away from a yearning for God and true purpose.
In practice
Using this quote in a sermon to highlight the importance of spiritual focus.
God will not turn away from doing you good. He will keep on doing good. He doesn't do good to His children sometimes and bad to them other times. He keeps on doing good and He never will stop doing good for ten thousand ages of ages. When things are going bad that does not mean God has stopped doing good. It means He is shifting things around to get them in place for more good, if you will go on loving Him.
You don’t have to know a lot of things for your life to make a lasting difference in the world. But you do have to know the few great things that matter, perhaps just one, and then be willing to live for them and die for them. The people that make a durable difference in the world are not the people who have mastered many things, but who have been mastered by one great thing.
Do all things without grumbling. Why? You have a sovereign God who is on your side, who works everything together for your good.
Christ did not die to make good works merely possible or to produce a half-hearted pursuit. He died to produce in us a passion for good deeds. Christian purity is not the mere avoidance of evil, but the pursuit of good.
The key to Christian living is a thirst and hunger for God. And one of the main reasons people do not understand or experience the sovereignty of grace and the way it works through the awakening of sovereign joy is that their hunger and thirst for God is so small.
Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn't.
Sirius, the brightest star in the heavens.... My grandfather would say we're part of something incredibly wonderful - more marvelous than we imagine. My grandfather would say we ought to go out and look at it once in a while so we don't lose our place in it.
Few people at the beginning of the nineteenth century needed an adman to tell them what they wanted.
In Christian terms, evangelization and humanization are not alternatives. Nor are the 'vertical dimension' of faith and the 'horizontal dimension' of love for one's neighbor and political change.
So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning-fork that had been struck upon a star.
When evil acts in the world it always manages to find instruments who believe that what they do is not evil but honorable.
Too many people take New York for granted. The primary reason is that history is not taught. That's outrageous in a city where the past is still visible.
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