A Reviving Book Review
September 5, 2007 05:34 PM
Don’t Waste Your Life
By John Piper
A Book Review by Pastor Joe Roof
Recently, Keith Gardner, a member here at CBC, did me a huge favor by purchasing this book and giving to me as a gift. The profound effect this book has had upon my life is only in its beginning stages but to delay in sharing what God is already teaching me through this spiritual masterpiece would be a tragic waste. To put this book on the shelf and ignore what was written would also be a tragic waste. While many book reviews can be boring, my prayer is that this one will be reviving for the glory of the Lord.
The reality is that lives can be easily wasted in things that have no bearing on our eternal future and standing with God. On pages 45-46, Piper said, “I will tell you what a tragedy is. I will show you how to waste your life. Consider a story from the February 1998 edition of Reader’ Digest, which tells about a couple who ‘took early retirement form their jobs in the Northeast five years ago when he was 59 and she was 51. Now they live in Punta Gorda, Florida, where they cruse on their 30 foot trawler, play softball and collect shells.’ At first, when I read it I thought it might be a joke. A spoof on the American Dream. But it wasn’t. Tragically, this was the dream: Come the end of your life – your one and only precious, God-given life-and let the last great work of your life, before giving an account to your Creator, be this: playing softball and collecting shells.”
Mark 8:34-38 says, “And when he had called the people unto him with his disciples also, he said unto them, Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel's, the same shall save it. For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation; of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”
Another challenging statement can be found on pages 119 where Piper says, “Oh, how many lives are wasted by people who believe that the Christian life means simply avoiding badness and providing for the family. So there is no adultery, no stealing, no killing, no embezzlement, no fraud-just lots of hard work during the day, and lots of TV and PG-13 videos in the evening (during quality family time), and lots of fun stuff on the weekend-woven around church (mostly). This is the life for millions of people. Wasted life. We were created for more, far more.”
If we are going to live useful lives for God, there must be a all-consuming purpose for which we live. For the believer, that purpose, according to God’s Word is to glorify God. On page 31 Piper says that, “God created me-and you-to live with a single, all embracing, all-transforming passion-namely, a passion to glorify God by enjoying and displaying His supreme excellence in all spheres of life. Enjoying and displaying are both crucial. If we try to display the excellence of God without joy in it, we will display a shell of hypocrisy and create a scorn of legalism. But if we claim to enjoy His excellence and do not display it for others to see and admire, we deceive ourselves, because the mark of God-enthralled joy is to overflow and expend by extending itself into the hearts of others. The wasted life is a life without a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for all peoples to enjoy.”
1 Corinthians 10:31 says, “Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.”
Piper provides a brilliant explanation of what it means to bring glory to God. To glorify something means to beautify something and it is impossible to ad beauty to God. So, Piper maintains that “glorify” is more like the word magnify. Just like a telescope can be used to magnify an image from far away, we are to make the glorious Savior known by everything we think, say, and do (p. 32).
We only have one life to magnify the Lord. What did you do today to magnify the Lord in your life?
While church is essential it’s not just about a church service friends. It is about helping people to see the grandest and more glorious site they’ll ever see – the glorified Savior as revealed in the Word of God. Today people leave church having attended a service or two or sometimes three, but do they ever leave having received a regenerating and reviving glimpse of the glorious Son of God?
Piper describes the cross as “the blazing center of God’s glory.” He says that, “…living for the glory of God must mean living for the glory of Christ crucified. Christ is the image of God. He is the sum of God’s glory in human form. And his beauty shines brightly at his darkest hour (p.44). On page 49, he says, If we would make much of God, we must make much of Christ. His bloody death is the blazing center of the glory of God. If God is to be our boast, what he did and what he is in Christ must be our boast.”
1 Corinthians 2:2 says, “for I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ and him crucified.
If God’s purpose for our lives is that we magnify the Lord, then we must magnify him in times of suffering. Here Piper provides one of best biblical perspectives on suffering ever to put in print. Piper reminds us that the Lord’s “beauty shines most brightly when treasured above health and wealth and life itself “(p. 61).
Suffering provides a great opportunity to show the blazing glory of God, and so God’s people do not run from suffering but embrace it as an opportunity to reveal the Lord. They also suffer because loving the Lord is more important than safety. “Untold numbers of professing Christians waste their lives trying to escape the cost of love. They do not see it is always worth it. There is more of God’s glory to be seen and savored through suffering than through self-serving escape. (p.73).
“Love is not Christ making much of us or making life easy. Love is doing what must he must do, at great cost to himself (and often to us), to enable us to enjoy making much of him forever.” (p.76)
Part two of this review will be submitted next week.