Piper at Passion

American Christianity needs to hear this message from Pastor John that was just delivered in the ATL.

He said:

"Do we love for God to love His glory ... or is our vaunted God-centeredness a cloak for self-centeredness by loving a God who is man-centered?"

"God demands that we all get on our face and worship Him, admire Him, treasure Him ... and count Him as the supreme value in the universe and He's angry when we don't,"

"Wherever you hear God saying 'praise me' what He's really saying is since praise is the completion of pleasure in greatness, please come to the fullness of your joy ... [and] of your satisfaction,"

"You weren't made to be somebody. You were made to know somebody and to be thrilled to know the greatest person in the world as your friend."
"It's counterintuitive at first but when you scratch deeper, it's so right."

"God is the one being in the universe for whom self-exaltation is not a needy act of a need ego but an infinite act of giving ... for our enjoyment," he said.
"This is not arrogance; this is grace. This is not egomania; this is love."

We are all sinners, he told the young audience. "You came into the world trading the glory of God for the glory of anything else but God. That belittles the glory of God."

Tying the Gospel message to his talk, Piper explained that when Christ died on the cross, God accomplished two seemingly impossible things: "He vindicated the worth of His glory ... and we've been forgiven."

"The foundation of our salvation is not our worth but God's worth," he stressed.

"There can't be a more solid foundation for our salvation than to know it's not based on my value but on god's infinite value," he said to applause.