Favorite Book #9 - Book Giveaway!!!!

I am continuing to list my top ten favorite books.  I am also giving away, to some lucky winner, each of my favorite books (all you have to do is comment or email, and at the end of the week I will draw for the winner).  This week features my ninth favorite book - The Pleasures of God by John Piper.

I love this book because it "reformed" me.  Before reading it, I zealously treated the doctrines of grace with contempt.  Election seemed horrendously unfair.  Predestination was a cuss word; and God's sovereignty in salvation was something that wasn't glorious to me at all.  Looking back I now see why I thought this way.

It was because I tried to understand the doctrines in the wrong order.  I tried to learn about election and predestination before understanding God's passion for His own glory.  I tried to understand God's sovereignty before understanding His supremacy. And I tried to learn and understand God's grace, without first understanding His justice.  I tried to understand His gifts to me, before understanding the Cross where Christ was offered up to God, for me.  


John Piper has been so influential in the modern movement of the Reformed faith, because he presents the Doctrines of Grace in their own redemptive order.  The book begins speaking about God's Pleasure in His Son, then to God's Pleasure in All He Does, and on to God's Pleasure in His Creation and in His Fame.  It is after laying out these marvelous doctrines that he introduces The Pleasure of God in Election, and The Bruising of His Son and so on.

My problem was that I tried desperately to understand Election before I had the proper framework for it. I was not ready to embrace it.  Prideful hands cannot handle a doctrine that creates (by nature) humility.  Knowing that God loves His glory more than He loves us was an humiliating, eye-opener for me.  And understanding that God's love for His own glory was the very foundation for His love for me, provided the necessity of His election of me, a sinner who had not loved His glory.

I love this book.  I hope you will get it and love it too.  If you leave a comment (or email me at smoore1517@gmail.com) I will throw your name in the hat and draw on Friday.  May God's providence get this book in your hands as soon as possible!