I thought I should send this summary out to everyone around this time of year as we begin another school year or another year of work or ministry. Every person who went on a Campus Crusade missions trip this summer got this great book by John Piper called "Don't Waste Your Life". Its a great book... I hope this whets your appetites!
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You are in one of two groups: Either you are a Christian, or God is now calling you to be one. (pg 9)
You now belong doubly to God: He made you, and he bought you. (pg 9)
It is better to lose your life than to waste it. (pg 10)
The modern assault on reality had turned Bible study into a swamp of subjectivity. You could see it in the church as small groups shared their subjective impressions about what Bible texts meant “for me” without an anchor in any original meaning. And you could see it in academic books as creative scholars cut their own heads off by arguing that texts have no objective meaning. (pg 24)
The Bible seemed to me then, and it seems today, inexhaustible. (pg 27)
If you don’t point people to God for everlasting joy, you don’t love. You waste your life. (pg 35)
God calls us to pray and think and dream and plan and work not to be made much of, but to make much of him in every part of our lives. (pg 37)
God without Christ is no God. (pg 38)
~ this next part is a long paragraph but I included here because it especially spoke and reminded me as I'm talking to Jehovah's Witnesses, Christadelphians and Mormons to speak of the deity of Christ. Piper once again "preaches it!" ~
Jesus is the litmus test of reality for all persons and all religions. He said it clearly: “The one who rejects me rejects him who sent me” (Luke 10:16). People and religions who reject Christ, reject God. Do other religions know the true God? Here is the test: Do they reject Jesus as the only Saviour for sinners who was crucified and raise by God from the dead? If they do, they do not know God in a saving way. That is what Jesus meant when he said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). Or when he said, “Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent me” (John 5:23). Or when he said to the Pharisees, “If God were your Father, you would love me” (John 8:42). It’s what the apostle John meant when he said, “No one who denies the Son has the Father. Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also” (1 John 2:23). Or when he said, “Everyone who… does not abide in the teaching of Christ, does not have God” (2 John 9). There is no point in romanticizing other religions that reject the deity and saving work of Christ. They do not know God. And those who follow them tragically waste their lives. (pg 39)
Daily Christian living is daily Christian dying. (pg 71)
Television is one of the greatest life-wasters of the modern age. And, of course, the Internet is running to catch up, and may have caught up. (pg 120)
~ the last 2 chapters of the book were the best! Piper focused on Magnifying Christ in your 9 -5 Job and then on Missions!!! ~
If you are human – your work is to take what God has made and shape it and use it to make Him look great. (pg 139)
The Bible puts a lot of emphasis on adorning the Gospel, not merely saying the Gospel. But now I want to say that speaking the good news of Christ is part of why God put you in your job. (pg 151)
No nice feelings about you as a good employee will save anyone. People must know the Gospel, which is the power of God unto eternal life (Romans 1:16). “Faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17). The early church was a “gospelling” bad of people. They spoke the Gospel. When the believers were driven out of Jerusalem because of persecution after Stephen’s martyrdom, they “went about preaching the word” – literally, “evangelizing or gospelling the word” (Acts 8:4). (pg 152)
Perhaps one other thing should be mentioned in regard to the relationships created by where we live and work. For many of you the move toward missions and deeds of mercy will not be a move away from your work but with your work to another, more needy, less-reached part of the world. (pg 153)
It is crucial that millions of Christians fulfill their life calling in secular jobs, just as it is crucial that during wartime the entire fabric of life and culture not unravel. But during wartime, even the millions of civilians love to get news from the front lines. They love to hear of the triumphs of the troops. They dream about the day when war will be no more. So it is with Christians. All of us should dream about this. We should love to hear how the advance of King Jesus is faring. We should love to hear of gospel triumphs as Christ plants his church among peoples held for centuries by alien powers of darkness. (pg 162)
In 1916, Protestants were giving 2.9% of their incomes to their churches. In 1933, the depth of the Great Depression, it was 3.2%. In 1955, just after affluence began spreading through our culture, it was still 3.2%. By 2000, when Americans were over 450% richer, after taxes and inflation, than in the Great Depression, Protestants were giving 2.6% of their incomes to their churches. (pg 172)
One way to describe the situation is to say that about 1.2-1.4 billion people have never had a change to hear the Gospel. (pg 173)
Pray for harvesters, and you may become one. (pg 176)
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