Emmanuel Evangelical Church Chippenham

(Author: Tyler Kenney)

For 27 years, from 1982 to 2008, John Piper wrote and read a poem for each Sunday of Advent, as a gift to Bethlehem Baptist Church. Most of these poems were about biblical characters who find their lives intertwined with significant events in redemptive history. Some of them even became books, such as Job, Ruth, The Innkeeper, and The Prodigal's Sister.

Pastor John has written poetry on other occasions as well, whether to celebrate his son's marriage, his daughter's baptism, or, most especially, to express his love for Noël. (See the entire list of his online poems.)

Back in December of 2007, Pastor John spoke at an after-church event at Bethelehem titled "A Pastor and His Poetry." It was an informal presentation, intermingled with Q&A, where he answered four main questions:

1. What is poetry?
2. Why read poetry?
3. Why write poetry?
4. How do I write poetry?

You can now listen online or download the audio.

(Author: Jeff Lacine)

We currently have internships available in the following departments. If you know someone in the Twin Cities area who is skilled and passionate in one of these areas, please send them our way.

Graphic and Web Design

• Design experience
• Fluent in HTML/CSS and Photoshop or InDesign

Media

• Experience in video editing and video production
• Fluent in Final Cut or After Effects

Information Systems

• Ability to perform self-directed research
• Fluent in a scripting language such as Ruby, Python, Perl, etc.
• Linux server administration ability

Marketing and PR

• Experience in marketing
• Fluent with Google docs and social media
• Strong writing skills

Web Content

• Strong writing skills
• Blogging experience
• Familiarity with current DG resource library

If you are interested in one of these positions send your resume to interns@desiringGod.org. Please include the position title in the subject line of the email.

(Author: Jeff Lacine)

In this final installment of the Essential Piper series we consider John Piper's exhortation, "Don't waste your life!"

It is possible to waste your life. Few things make me tremble more than the possibility of taking this onetime gift of life and wasting it. Every morning when I walked into the kitchen as a boy I saw hanging on the wall the plaque that now hangs in my living room: "Only one life, twill soon be past, only what's done for Christ will last." And now I am almost 58, and the river of life is spilling over the falls of my days with tremendous speed. More and more I smell eternity. And oh, how I want to use my life well. It is so short and so fragile and so final. You get one chance to live your life. And then the judgment. I speak as a father who has children your age, and I am jealous with Jesus that they and you not waste your life. ("Don't Waste Your Life," from December 29, 2003)

Posts in This Series

• Essential Piper: Christian Hedonism
• Essential Piper: The Sovereignty of God
• Essential Piper: The Supremacy of Christ
• Essential Piper: The Centrality of Scripture
• Essential Piper: Let the Nations Be Glad!
• Essential Piper: Expository Exultation
• Essential Piper: Don't Waste Your Life

(Author: Jon Bloom)

A few days ago I listened to a sermon by a man who is preparing to lead a missionary team that will plant itself into one of the least reached nations in the world.

The most optimistic estimates of the number of indigenous Christians in this nation is less than the number of people who attend Bethlehem Baptist Church on a Sunday morning. A lot less.

Listening to him was like listening to the writer of Hebrews. This man knows what he's getting into. He's planted a church in this nation already. The cost to follow Jesus in this nation is high. A good week is when no one in the church has been beaten.

These brothers and sisters are experiencing a "hard struggle with sufferings" (Hebrews 10:32). There are beatings, property plundering, heresies, divisions, and immorality. Most church troubles we read about in the Epistles, they have it.

Listening to this missionary left most of us American Christians wondering if we'd be able to hack it. And that's unnerving.

The New Testament teaches us that whether or not our treasure is really in heaven is most clearly seen when it costs us our earthly treasures in order to obtain it. But American Christians live in the most prosperous nation in world history and the one in which it costs the least to be a Christian.

This environment can be deadly to faith. It allows false faith to masquerade as real very easily. And its power to dissipate zeal and energy and mission-focus and willingness to risk is extraordinary because it doesn't come to us with a whip and a threat. It comes to us with a pillow and a promise of comfort for us and our children. The former makes us desperate for God. The latter robs our sense of desperation.

And it's the lack of a sense of desperation for God that is so deadly. If we don't feel desperate for God, we don't tend to cry out to him. Love for this present world sets in subtly, like a spiritual leprosy, damaging spiritual nerve endings so that we don't feel the erosion and decay happening until it's too late.

So we must fast and pray for and support the suffering church in the diseases that can set in from harsh adversity. But we must also fast and pray for God to deliver us from the diseases that set in from prosperity. We need him. We can discipline ourselves in various ways. But we cannot manufacture our own desperation. Only God can make us desperate for him.

So God, whatever it takes, increase our awareness of our dependence on you in everything! Keep us desperate for you so that the deceitfulness of sin does not harden our hearts (Hebrews 3:13). In Jesus' name, amen.

(Author: Matt Heerema)

Last month we launched the public preview of the new DesiringGod.org, opening it up for your feedback and asking you to help us find problems with the Web site. Your response was amazing! A lot of great feedback was given, many bugs were discovered, and great improvements will result. We are grateful for all of you who took the time to take a look and write us.

We have been hard at work since then, and we are currently in the middle of a major push to complete this project. The whole Web team is literally working night and day this week, fixing problems and making improvements which you will see rolling out over the next several weeks.

But we could use your help, one more time.

The more people we can get poking around the new site—finding resources, signing up for a DG Network account (or logging in to your existing one), syncing with Facebook, joining groups, favoriting resources, and suggesting new resources to friends—the more it will help us find any final outstanding issues.

Essentially, you could join the Web team this week as we work around the clock to make the new DesiringGod.org a wonderful resource for the Church everywhere, to the Glory of God.

While site errors will automatically be reported, please email us at feedback@desiringGod.org with any questions, problems or comments.

Thank you again for how you have helped us already, and thanks in advance for another round of help!

(Author: Jeff Lacine)

Tune in to desiringGod.org/live to see Dave Harvey live streaming tonight, from 7-9PM CT. Ask him questions via Twitter using hashtag #dglive.

If you don't know Dave Harvey, check out our recent blog posts about him and the recent buzz he has created around the blogosphere.

(Author: Jeff Lacine)

Westminster Bookstore is having a a sale on The Essential Edwards Collection, through Monday, August 2nd. The set is marked at 50% off list, making the cost for all 5 books $22.50. (That averages out to be $4.50 a book!)

(Author: Jon Bloom)

Today, July 28th, marks the 28th anniversary of the plane crash that killed Christian singer/songwriter and evangelist, Keith Green. He was 28 years old. Also lost in that crash were two of Keith's children (Josiah & Bethany), the pilot (Don Burmeister), and an entire family (John & Dede Smalley and their six children).

I clearly remember July 28, 1982. I had just turned 17 and only recently had discovered Keith's music. He was unlike anyone I had ever heard. It wasn't music that drew me to Keith. It was his heart.

Keith was in love with Jesus in a way that few seemed to be. His passion was the kind I read about in the New Testament. Keith was real. You could tell just by listening to him. And you could also tell that Keith wasn't mainly about music, he was about a message. He didn't care about his career; he cared whether or not people followed Jesus. Keith was all about spreading a passion for the supremacy of Jesus.

And because of that, I loved his music. Keith had quickly become a hero of mine. His sudden death was shock.

The main reason I pay tribute to Keith today is because his influence has shaped one significant aspect of Desiring God. When John and I launched this work in 1994, we both agreed that DG should adopt the same whatever-you-can-afford policy for our resources that Keith's Last Days Ministries had for his music. This policy has served thousands of people. And I thank God for Keith's example in this.

Keith certainly didn't get everything right. He didn't have great things to say about Reformed theology, although some of his song lyrics show that he was more reformed than he may have realized (see "You Put This Love in My Heart"). But he was only a Christian for about 7 years and did almost all of his growing in public ministry. And considering how long it's taken me to learn things, I'm amazed at how well he did.

But in many ways Keith was a kindred spirit. He was passionate about Jesus, sought to spread that passion, loved the Bible, lived a war-time lifestyle, exhorted people not waste their lives, sought to mobilize people for missions, and lived out radical generosity. Keith's life was short, but he lived well and did not compromise.

So it's fitting that today we thank God for the life of Keith Gordon Green.