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Desiring God
Discussion Notes
Here are some questions to be asked over four
sessions as a group works their way through Desiring God by John Piper.
While I am very sympathetic to the book as a whole,
the first session on the happiness of God takes a different trajectory to
Piper’s. For me, the happiness of
God needs to be grounded in a far more Trinitarian account of God’s life. I’ve tried to reflect that in session
1.
Session 1
“Delight yourself in the LORD and He
will give you the desires of your heart.”
Psalm 37:4
Five principles of Christian
Hedonism
1)
The longing to be happy is a universal human experience, and it is good
not sinful.
“All men
seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ,
they all tend to this end. The
cause of some going to war, and of others avoiding it, is the same desire
in both attended with different views.
The will never takes the least step but to this object. This is the motive of every man, even
of those who hang themselves.” Blaise Pascal - Pensees
2)
We should never try to deny or resist our longing to be happy, as though
it were a bad impulse. Instead we should seek to intensify this longing
and nourish it with whatever will provide the deepest and most enduring
satisfaction.
“If there
lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and
earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that
this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the
Christian faith. Indeed, if we
consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of
the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds
our desires not too strong, but too weak.
We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex
and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who
wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what
is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” CS
Lewis – The Weight of Glory
3)
The deepest and most enduring happiness is found only in God.
“Whom have I
in heaven but You? And earth has
nothing I desire besides You.”
Psalm 73:25
4)
The happiness we find in God reaches its consummation when it is shared
with others in the manifold ways of love.
“Love is the
overflow of joy in God which gladly meets the needs of others.” John
Piper
“Love is
putting your happiness in the happiness of another.” Jonathan
Edwards
5)
To the extent we try to abandon the pursuit of our own pleasure, we fail
to honour God and love people. Or, to put it positively: the pursuit of
pleasure is a necessary part of all worship and virtue. That is,
The chief end of man is to
glorify God
BY
enjoying Him forever.
The Persons of Joy
The foundation for Christian
Hedonism is the happiness of God.
This is because the aim
of Christian Hedonism is to be happy in God – to delight in Him. But children cannot enjoy the company
of their father if he is moody, dismal and frustrated. Unless we are convinced that God is the
happiest Being in the universe then we won’t make Him the true object of
our affections. Let us then look
at the three Persons to see that, far from being an indifferent Deity –
the Living God is a dynamic, personal and joyful relationship of Father,
Son and Holy Spirit. Here is a God
in whom we can delight!
John
17:1-5; 20-26
Before the creation of the world
– what was there?
How do the Father and the Son
relate to each other?
What seems to be the pinnacle of
creation according to Jesus?
How do the Father and the Son
relate to believers?
Proverbs
8:22-36
Here is the Person Wisdom
speaking (8:12). Who is
Wisdom? How is Wisdom described?
In John 17:13, Jesus says the
full measure of His joy will be in believers – how does Proverbs 8:30
describe the joy of Jesus?
Luke
10:21, 22
Where does the Father find joy?
Where does the Son find joy?
Where does the Spirit fit in?
At
the heart of the universe is an eternal love story between the Father and
the Son. Before anything else was,
this fountain of love flowed between them in the joyful communion of the
Holy Spirit. In the act of creation
this love “went public.” The
Father’s love for the Son overflowed into the creation. Colossians 1:16 tells us that all
things were made by Christ and for Christ. The whole universe is a love gift from
God the Father to God the Son. It
all exists for Jesus who is the Glory of His Father. (Heb 1:3). We live rightly in the world when we
share the Father’s love for the Son.
(Matt 3:17).
God
is the happiest Being in the universe because He is love. He is the loving communion of Father,
Son and Holy Spirit. When we love
Christ and are joined to God, we are caught up into this divine
relationship.
If this is how the universe ticks
– how should we relate to God?
Are you often tempted to think of
God as aloof, cold or stroppy?
What can we do to overturn such
unhelpful thinking?
For next week consider these two
verses:
Our God is in heaven; He does whatever pleases
Him. (Psalm 115:3)
How does the sovereignty of God guarantee the happiness of God?
Without faith it is impossible to please God, because
anyone who comes to Him must believe that He exists and that He rewards
those who earnestly seek Him. (Hebrews 11:6)
Can you please God if you don’t
see Him as Rewarder?
Do you pursue God as The Rewarder
or do you tend to think of this as mercenary?
Session 2
The pursuit of Joy
Where is happiness found?
“All men
seek happiness…This is the motive of every man, even of those who hang
themselves” – Blaise Pascal
How
could Pascal say this – ‘even of those who hang themselves’!? What is
meant here?
Ephesians
2:1-3 described the scenario before we
became Christians:
What was our condition?
In what ways were we lead? In what ways did we pursue
our own agenda?
How do these truths coincide?
Where do the desires of the non-Christian fit into the
schemes of the devil?
To what extent does this lend support to the
statement: “all men seek happiness”?
Now as Christians there is a
problem. We used to want to do bad things. Now we want to do good things, but the
flesh means that often we don’t do what we want (see Romans 7:14-25 for
an extended discourse on this).
Does all this mean Pascal is wrong?
Galatians
5:16-26:
What does the Christian want?
Where does this desire come
from?
Does Paul tell people not to do what they want?
If we know the good and we
want to do it, why can’t we carry it out?
How are we to answer the
“desires of the flesh” now that we’re Christians?
The war of the flesh and the
Spirit is a terrible problem for the Christian. But it is not a terrible
problem for Pascal. The two
humanities fighting it out within the Christian are not fighting a battle
of the will but a battle of the desires. The ‘old man’ seeks what he desires,
the ‘new man’ seeks what he desires – the trouble is that they both share
one body!
This points to the great evil and
irrationality of sin. Jeremiah sums
it up well in Jer 2:12-13:
In what ways are the two sins
foolish? In what ways are they
wicked?
What are rebellious Israel
following – their will, their intelligence or their desires?
What is the LORD’s offer
appealing to – their will, their intelligence or their desires?
At the heart of sin is foolish
independence from the All Satisfying LORD so as to gratify the paltry
cravings of the flesh. Becoming a
Christian therefore is about awakening our desire in the Great such that
we can count all other things “loss compared to the surpassing greatness
of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (Phil 3:8).
This seems to be the point of
Jesus’ two mini-parables in Matt
13:44, 45:
Why would someone give up all
for the kingdom? Why would they not?
“It would
seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling
about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us,
like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because
he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the
sea. We are far too easily
pleased.” CS Lewis
How
can we maintain our vision of Christ as the treasure worth more than the
world?
What
would it mean to take seriously the fact that in Him is the deepest joy
imaginable?
Session 3
The practice of Joy
Life as Worship
Worship is commanded by God. It’s at the heart of the first two
commandments (Ex 20:3-6). You
cannot read the Psalms for very long before you are ordered to worship God.
Jesus says that the work of the Father is to seek
worshippers! (John 4:23, 34)
BUT – there are ways of worshipping. It’s possible to come to Him with
entirely the wrong motives. The LORD commonly criticizes His people about
their worship. “They honour me
with their lips but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain.”(Mark
7:6) Such people don’t really
worship God at all. Given the
importance of true worship –
this is serious!!
How does Mark 7 challenge your own approach to God?
There are wrong ways and right
ways of coming to God. But God has
told us the right way: “Without faith it is impossible to please God,
because anyone who comes to Him must believe that He exists and that
He rewards those who earnestly seek Him.” (Hebrews 11:6)
We must not only come to God – we
must come to Him as the Great Rewarder.
What is the reward that is promised and in
which we must believe?
Does it seem mercenary to
approach God for reward?
What is the alternative to
approaching God for His reward?
John Piper says in chapter 4 of
Desiring God: “Disinterested benevolence toward God is evil. If you come to God dutifully offering
Him the reward of your fellowship instead of thirsting after the reward
of His fellowship, then you exalt yourself above God as His benefactor
and belittle Him as a needy beneficiary – and that is evil.”
Has Piper overstated the case?
What does it mean to be God’s
benefactor?
Why is this wrong? (cf Psalm 50:12; Romans 11:35; Acts
17:25; Mark 10:45)
How are we tempted to think of
ourselves as God’s benefactor?
“Shout for joy
to the LORD, all the earth.
Worship the LORD with gladness, come before Him with joyful
songs.” (Psalm 100:1,2).
It is a necessary part of all
worship that we do it expressly seeking the joyous reward of friendship with the Living God. Our worship
is not worship at all, and therefore sinful, if it is not done for the joy to be had in Him.
Would you agree with this? Why
or why not?
How can you alter your
perception of God, worship and yourself in response to this?
Here are four objections a person
may put to Christian Hedonism as it relates to worship:
1) Does it
mean God becomes a means to help you get worldly pleasures?
2) Doesn’t
it turn your eyes away from God and towards your subjective experience of
Him?
3) Doesn’t
it simply make a god out of pleasure?
4) If we
seek God out of our interest
(in pleasure), doesn’t it place us above God?
This
week, think about some responses you might want to make to
these objections.
Next
week, we’ll consider the very important question – “Yes,
but what if I don’t feel like
it!!”
Session 4
The persistence of Joy
Fighting for our happiness
In the past few weeks we have
seen the centrality of our emotional life in the Christian walk. Our happiness in God is the sign to Him
and to the world that He is the All Satisfying Object of our heart. God is most glorified in us when we are
most satisfied in Him.
The Bible is full of commands
about how we ought to feel if the truths of the gospel are firmly
entrenched in our hearts.
Contentment
– Ex 20:17; Heart-felt love –
1 Pet 1:22; Peace – Col
3:15; Zeal – Rom 12:11; Sorrow
and Joy – Rom 12:12; Desire – 1 Pet 2:2; Gratitude
– Eph 5:19,20
But can we govern how we feel?
What should we do if we don’t feel these things?
In Desiring God, Piper recognizes
three stages of worship. The
highest level, where we should aim, is unencumbered joy in God.
Psalm
63:1-5 TOP
LEVEL
What sorts of things are conveyed by David calling Him
“my God”? (v1)
What kind of longing is described and what kind of
satisfaction?
Describe a time when your joy in the LORD was like
this.
The prior stage is perhaps more
common – we do not feel fullness but a great longing for it.
Psalm
42:1-5 MIDDLE
LEVEL
What is the psalmist’s view of
God such that he can write vv1 and 2?
What is the psalmist’s current
situation?
What is the psalmist’s
attitude as he remembers?
His soul is downcast – does he
listen to his soul? What does he do?
How can we imitate the
psalmist’s tactics?
Then there is the lowest level –
where all worship begins and where it often returns for a dark
season. There is great barrenness,
but even here God has granted the grace of repentant sorrow for having so
little love.
Psalm
73:21-26 LOWEST
LEVEL
Have you ever felt ‘a brute beast’
before God? What do you do when you feel like that?
In what ways is even the
confession of v22 glorifying to God?
How is the psalmist ‘with
God’? Who is holding who?
How can we remind ourselves of
v24?
What do verses 25 and 26 mean
for the hard times when everything looks bleak?
A four point prayer for restoring intimacy with God -
TOGS
“Turn
my heart towards your statutes and not towards selfish gain!” (Psalm 119:36)
“Open my eyes, that I may see wonderful things in your
law.” (Psalm 119:18)
“Give me an undivided heart that I may fear your name.” (Psalm 86:11)
“Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love, that we
may sing for joy and be glad all our days.” (Psalm 90:14)
Jesus is aware that persistence in joy will be a
problem.
In Matthew 24 Jesus predicts:
“Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow
cold,
but he who stands firm to the end will be saved.”
Note that Jesus does not want a
tight-lipped dogged resolution by his followers – Jesus is concerned that
His followers stand firm in warm-hearted
love till the end!
In Joshua 23:11 – he counsels the
Israelites “Be very careful to love the LORD your God.”
How important is it to love the
Lord? How can we be careful to do it?
What about the rigours of Christian service and
sacrifice?
Mark
10:28-31
What made Peter say verse 28 to Jesus?
Have you ever wanted to draw attention to your own
‘sacrifices’ for Jesus?
What feelings does such a desire show?
How does verse 45 warn us about an attitude of
‘sacrifice’ for Jesus?
Why do you think Jesus draws our attention to the
rewards of gospel service?
Should we serve focusing on our sacrifice or on
Christ’s reward?
What about suffering and persecution?
If anything will threaten our joy
in God it will be suffering right?
Lamentations
3:16-27
Jeremiah’s lamentations are
incredibly realistic about the horrors of this fallen world and the
tragedy of our own sin. In these
verses though, Jeremiah reminds himself of his hope.
What had Jeremiah put his hope in – verses 16-18?
Why might this passage be called the battle of two
rememberances? – verses 19-21
What does it mean that the LORD is his portion? –
verses 22-24
How can it be good to bear the yoke? – verses
25-27
Romans
5:1-5
What is the hope of which Paul
talks? How is such a hope enjoyed?
How is such a hope
increased? What are the steps to
increasing hope?
How do you ‘rejoice in
suffering’??
The
Book of Hebrews
This book is written to a church
in the midst of suffering and yet the joys of the Christian life shine
through. Examine each of these
verses from the concluding four chapters
Hebrews
10:32-34; Hebrews 11:26; Hebrews 12:2; Hebrews 13:17
Ask yourself: What is the suffering involved?
What
is the joy promised? How does it
relate to future hope?
What
is the motivation of the Christian to be?
Our
joy not only sustains us through suffering. Our joy is heightened through suffering.
In all that we experience we are to go deeper with God – to
renounce the fleeting and failing trapping of the world and to prize
Christ more than all else. This is
joy and this is the Christian life – now and into eternity:
“To live is Christ and to die is
gain.” (Phil 1:21)
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