Desiring God

Desiring God
Meditations of A Christian Hedonist

Other than the Bible, the book that has influenced me the most by far is Desiring God by John Piper. My life is completely, very visibly different after my encounter with that book. It changed me inside, outside, my emotions, my logic, my thoughts, and my actions. I say none of this lightly. The differences before and after are extreme. To paraphrase CS Lewis, the book was good, but not safe.

Before Desiring God I believe I was a Christian, but my life was safe, comfortable, and predictable. I was not very happy, but I thought my safety and comfort would eventually bring happiness. Was I ever wrong!

One day a pastor at my church observed my unhappiness and gave me the book. I read it through once and I got the basic idea, which was to pursue your joy in God. I understood it with my mind, but my heart was disengaged; it was not important to me. A few months later John Piper, the author, spoke at a church event. That is what stopped me still in my tracks and then turned me completely around. Piper preached this sermon: God's Passion for the Supremacy of God (You can click the link to hear a recording of that exact message preached that day, but listen at your own risk.) I cried the entire time. I felt Piper being deeply emotionally affected by the beauty of God Himself. I felt his joy in God. I deeply understood why he had devoted his life to preaching God’s Word. I caught a glimpse of what motivated Christian heroes of the past to die for their faith. I knew I wanted what Piper had!

I immediately dropped everything and went back to reading Desiring God, only this time I was praying that God would cause me to “get it” in my heart, not just my mind. I determined to keep reading and reading until it got through to me. I especially focused on the Scriptures Piper quoted. I started to see that I was always pursuing my own joy in all my decisions but that in God Himself was a joy better than all others. I cried, I prayed, I longed for God, and He met me! I think I reread the chapter on money and the chapter on suffering at least 5 times each. In the end I decided to pursue wholeheartedly my joy in Him and give of my time, energy, money, and love, to the full amount God would enable me.

I started making major life decisions to maximize my joy in God eternally at the expense of earthly security and ease. I gave money. I stopped trying to impress influential people. Instead I sought out needy people, served them and befriended them, pointing them to Jesus, the One greater than all their needs!

I will never be the same; I will never turn back; I don’t want to! There is no one, there is nothing better than God!

By the way, for people who don't have the time to follow all of the theological depth in Desiring God, Piper wrote a very brief summary entitled Dangerous Duty of Delight. That smaller book says everthing Desiring God says, except it leaves out some theological arguments and counter-arguments. The inspirational passion for God is definitely left in!

Christian fellowship and gay jokes

Things have gone very well in my new church in San Diego. A few weeks ago I had a serious talk with one of the pastors and told him all about my fight with same sex attraction and he was supportive and helpful. He understands that I will probably never have enough attraction to a woman to get married, and that is fine with him. In other words, turning from homosexuality means turning to God, not necessarily turning to heterosexuality.

The people in this church have done their best to befriend me and make me feel included. I need that and I thank God for that. Today that pastor invited me over to his house for Thanksgiving dinner with his family and many other friends from the church. I had to laugh because there definitely was a gay theme to some of the joking around before dinner. Two very straight guys sat down together in a very small love seat right in front of their wives. Yes, those are the guys in the photo above. They joked about each others’ bodies and wrestled around like little kids. At that point the church worship leader walked in wearing multicolored flip flops and a tight fitting T-shirt that called attention to his well developed chest. One of the guys on the love seat stopped wrestling, looked up at the worship leader and said,

“You’re looking bi-curious today.”

I laughed a little too loud and long at that, but we were all ok with each other. Several guys in that room know about my attraction to men, and we all knew I would not be offended but that I was laughing along with them. I love it when I have friends I am so comfortable with, that I can joke even about that subject.

Emotional Dependence

In commenting on other blogs such as http://collegejay.blogspot.com/ I often get involved in questions about “emotional dependence”. I only use that phrase in the negative sense because it says enough in 2 words so that most people know basically what I mean.

I agree that there is nothing wrong with loving a friend so much that sometimes I deeply feel the need to share in fellowship (emotionally depend on him). What I mean by unhealthy emotional dependence is when I selfishly idolize someone to an extreme. Some signs of this extreme are an obsession where I think about him constantly, a jealousy when he spends time with others, or a demand to see him often. In other words, if I treat a guy like a boyfriend, not just a friend, then I have an unhealthy emotional dependence on him.

I definitely HAVE experienced emotionally fulfilling friendships. We all need those. Ask God for more of them as you keep reaching out to others in unselfish love.

Heaven Rejoices!

"I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent."- Luke 15:7

I heard from one of my friends in Maryland that JS is now a Christian! I have prayed for him for years. He was one of the teenage guys who used to hang out at Tom's house. Like Mike, he got very involved in drugs and his life spiralled downward. He has been married, divorced, in and out of rehab several times, and now at age 26 he is back at his parents' house. A few weeks ago he saw that he would die if he continued down the same path so he asked his father to pray for him. His father asked him what to pray and JS said,"I need God!" At that point he knew that God had made him a new man. God gave him faith and he really believed that Jesus is the only way to a relationship with God and eternal life. JS has been free from drugs, and is now praying, studying the Bible, and sharing in fellowship with Christians. Everyone who knows him is amazed with the change and the very visible love, joy, and peace!

There is such a beauty in God's work to change a human heart. John G. Paton, missionary to Vanuatu in the 1800s, described this well:

"At the moment I put the bread and wine into those dark hands, once stained with the blood of cannibalism, now stretched out to receive and partake the emblems and seals of the Redeemer's love, I had a foretaste of the joy of glory that well nigh broke my heart to pieces. I shall never taste a deeper bliss, till I gaze on the glorified face of Jesus himself."

In the words of Charles Wesley, this is what Jesus Christ did:

Mild He lays his glory by,
Born that man no more may die;
Born to raise the sons of earth;
Born to give them second birth.

Jesus has raised JS, the son of earth, and given him second birth!

A wedding and an expression of friendship.

I just returned from my friends’ wedding. Yes, this is the guy I called Justin in a previous post. It was an outdoor wedding in the backyard of the house of some friends from church. It featured the reliable San Diego sunshine and cloudless sky. Justin and his wife (I’ll call her “Megan”) are both very committed to a beautiful freedom from the slavery to money and possessions. Their material simplicity was clearly reflected in the wedding. When they shared their vows and they said “in sickness and in health”, I knew that Justin has been supportive and helpful to Megan in a recent illness. When they said “for richer or for poorer”, I knew that they have been trusting God while not knowing where they would live or where the next month’s rent would come from. God has provided beautifully in answer to their prayers. I cried joyful tears. That is real love.

At the reception afterwards in the same backyard Justin made it a point to talk to me. He wanted to express his friendship to me and then clear up a small misunderstanding that had hurt me greatly. Through a lack of communication I had been excluded from an event a few weeks earlier. I was trying to overlook the offensive action, but it had caused me much emotional pain. I was determined to wait until AFTER the wedding and honeymoon to bring it up, since I did not want to add any drama to the emotional overload that Justin and Megan were already dealing with. Well, Justin cared about me so much that he took time out from his own wedding to bring it up himself and to assure me that he did NOT want to exclude me and that I am one of his closest friends. I almost cried tears of joy again. I thank God for friends like Justin.

My friends and gay marriage in California

Pray for my good friend "Justin" and his fiancé "Megan". They are going to the courthouse tomorrow here in California to get their marriage license for their wedding, which is in a week and a half. As you probably know, tomorrow is only the 2nd day the state is issuing licenses for gay marriage, too. That means they will possibly be one heterosexual couple surrounded by a crowd of gays in the courthouse waiting for a license.

Pray that God will use them to show Christian love and understanding to the others in that situation. Ever since I have known him, Justin has been very caring and understanding toward us who deal with same sex attraction. Pray that others will see in Justin and Megan that all Christians don't fit the Phelps stereotype.

How to Change the World

This is a quote from John Piper given at One Day 2000:

"You don't have to know a lot of things for your life to make a lasting difference in the world. But you do have to know the few great things that matter, and then be willing to live for them and die for them. The people that make a durable difference in the world are not the people who have mastered many things, but who have been mastered by a few great things. If you want your life to count, if you want the ripple effect of the pebbles you drop to become waves that reach the ends of the earth and roll on for centuries and into eternity, you don't have to have a high IQ or EQ; you don't have to have to have good looks or riches; you don't have to come from a fine family or a fine school. You have to know a few great, majestic, unchanging, obvious, simple, glorious things, and be set on fire by them."

Here is a link to the audio:
http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/MediaPlayer/1483/Audio/

There is no substitute for hearing, not just reading, John Piper. The emotional power that comes through in his spoken word has gotten through to my heart in ways that merely reading his messages have not.