I enjoyed "Desiring God" and "When I don't Desire God", but in terms of practical theology and life-changing insight, "The Pleasures of God" is on a whole different level.

Subtitled "Meditations on God's Delight in Being God", the book deals with how God takes pleasure in various aspects of his being, his creation, and his divine plan. As mentioned in an earlier post, the chapter entitled "The Pleasure of God in the Prayers of the Upright" has already had a big impact in my own personal life and ministry.

Prayer is not the only subject that receives Piper's careful and challenging analysis, however. Such topics as election, the relationship between God the Father and God the Son, and why bad things happen to good people are considered with care, thoroughness, and accuracy.

Far from being a dry theological tome, "The Pleasures of God" challenges God's people to action. I will end this review with a quote from the chapter on prayer:

"The crying need of the hour--every hour--is to put the churches on a wartime footing. Mission leaders are crying out, 'Where is the church's concept of militancy, of a mighty army willing to suffer, moving ahead with exultant determination to take the world by storm? Where is the risk-taking, the launching out on God alone?' The answer is that it has been swallowed up by a peace-time mentality. Thousands of Christians do not hear the diabolic bombs dropping and the bullets zinging overhead. They don't smell the hellish Agent Orange in teh whitened harvest of teh world. They don't cringe or weep at the thousands who perish every week. They don't reckon with spiritual hosts of wickedness in heavenly places and teh world rulers of this present darkness. In fact, it is not dark, they say. It is bright and comfortable and cheery--just look at my home and car and office and cabin and boat. And listen to my new disc-player and look at my new video equipment."

If that is not a convicting indictment of today's Western Christianity, I don't know what is.

The Pleasures of God, one of Piper’s earliest works, is a theological book on the nature and work of God which is written for theologians, pastors, and laymen alike.
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This is considered Piper's greatest work. I disagree - half of its content is unrelated (directly) to the thesis of the book, making it confusing and uninteresting at times. However, even in its off-topic discussions, this text is filled with the God of the Bible - a God who seeks His own Glory with great pleasure, making Him the only God that could make the Gospel Good News. Much is to be gained from this book, especially the last two chapters and the appendix. ( )

“The worth and excellency of a soul is to be measured by the object of it’s love.” This quote by a young Puritan named Henry Scougal stuck to the forefront of my mind for weeks. It’s the opening quote to the first chapter of Pipers book. It’s a good summation of the substance of this wonderfully powerful book.

Piper writes the way I feel on my best days. I once thought the guy was a veritable Superman of the faith till I heard an interview of him talking to Mark Dever of 9 Marks Ministries. Piper commented that his most popular work, Desiring God, was so entitled because it was so often how he felt, he desired God because he didn’t feel he had enough of Him. His writings are his deepest longings. They are ours as well, weather we know it or not.

Piper oozes passion, but it’s a focused passion. He’s got only one thing in mind that has overtaken all his writing and preaching, it’s the essence of his life and its summed up in his paraphrase of something Jonathan Edwards once said, that being ‘God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him’. The glory of God for God is his passion; his deepest desire is for us to have the same.

This book, possibly his best yet, deals with those things that God has most pleasure in. Be forewarned, this book is not for lightweights. I felt myself humbled and broken reading Piper’s insights on the heart of God. The book didn’t rock my concept of God, but each time I picked it up I couldn’t put it down, I was captivated. Piper has a way of clearing some of the clouds of mystery that often surround our understanding of God, and in this book he does it in grand style.

The first six chapters have little to do with us, and much to do with Him and Him alone. Piper deals with weighty issues, such as election and God’s sovereignty, in grand style. If you aren’t a Calvinist beware, this book could totally shake your foundations (i.e. make you biblical (tongue in cheek). In these chapters Gods glory is on display as the great “I AM”, everything there is.

The last four chapters deal with Gods pleasure in us. After reading the first chapters, these last ones break your heart and build you up knowing your utter depravity and the greatness of God overcoming it.

Get this book, read it and then read it again. It includes a great question section at the back for small group study or personal reflection.

Favorite quotes: “The original, the primal, the deepest, the foundational joy of God is the joy he has in his own perfections as he sees them reflected in the glory of his Son.”

“Gods first love is rooted in the value of his holy name, not the value of sinful people. And because it is, there is hope for the sinful people–since they are not the ground of their salvation, God’s name is.”

“God does not take pleasure merely in being known and loved in an abstract way disconnected from his work in creation and redemptive history, God created the world and has worked in history not so that creation and history would be ignored. Christ did not become man so that the story of his life and work recorded in a book
would be disregarded in favor of a mystical bypass to God. This would not honor the Christ of history.” ( )

The book that helped transform my view of God, Christianity, ministry, and life. Probably the most transforming book I have read in my life. A classic of 20th century devotional theology. Aside from the book that helped convert me - Mere Christianity - this is the most important book I have read that is not named The Bible. ( )