I remember the devotion of your youth,

your love as a bride,
how you followed me in the wilderness,
in a land not sown.
(Jer 2:2)

The covenant people of God are his wife. They have often been faithless and broken the marriage covenant. Would God—could God—divorce his wife? No!

“I will betroth you to me forever, I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love, and in mercy. I will betroth you to me in faithfulness; and you shall know the Lord.” (Hosea 2:19f)

But what of her horrible adulteries? Surely divorce is legitimate here! Israel is an “adulterous wife, who receives strangers instead of her husband” (Ezekiel 16:14). Now what? Separation? Judgment? Yes: “I will give you into the hand of your lovers. . . and they shall stone you and cut you to pieces. . . I will make you stop playing the harlot” (16:39).  But is that all? Is the separation final? Does he divorce her? NO!

“Yet I will remember my covenant with you in the days of your youth, and I will establish with you an everlasting covenant . . . I will forgive you all that you have done, says the Lord God.” (Ezekiel 16:60, 63)

But is it not wrong to take her back after she has lain with so many others? “You have played the harlot with many lovers, and would you return to me?” (Jeremiah 3:1). Ah, but what a husband he is! Incredible in grace! “Return, faithless Israel, says the Lord. I will not look on you in anger, for I am merciful, says the Lord” (3:20).

God will not divorce. “For I hate divorce, says the Lord, the God of Israel” (Malachi 2:16).

We were cast out, bloody, dirty, as good as dead. And then the Son of God walks by. Stops. Looks at this disgusting, filthy, aborted thing as good as dead and covered with blood (Ezek 16:1-14), and says, “At last! My wife. My beloved. My chosen one. Live!” And he comes again when she is grown and covers her nakedness and washes away her filth and makes a marriage covenant with her . . . and then beautifies her and prepares to present her to himself in glory.

God is wholly committed to saving and enriching his marriage! Are you?

Full of hope with God
for my marriage and yours,

Pastor John Piper

How shall I help you? How can I be used of God in this moment at One Day to waken in you a single passion for a single great reality that will unleash you and will set you free from small dreams and send you to the ends of the earth?

The answer I think the Lord gave me was: take them to one verse of Scripture that is as close to the center as you can get and show them why Paul says there what he says.

The verse is Galatians 6:14: “May it never be that I would boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.”

Or to state it positively: Only boast in the cross of Jesus Christ. It is a single idea. A single goal. A single passion. Only boast in the cross. The word can be translated “exult in” or “rejoice in.” Only exult in the cross of Christ. Only rejoice in the cross of Christ. Paul says let this be your single passion, your single boast and joy and exultation. In this great moment called ONE DAY let the ONE THING that you love, the one thing that you cherish, the one thing that you rejoice in and exult over be the cross of Jesus Christ.

But what does that mean? Is that just double talk? You exult in one thing and just say that you are exulting in another thing? No. There is a very profound reason for saying this – that all exultation, all rejoicing, all boasting in anything should be a rejoicing in the cross of Jesus Christ.

He means that, for the Christian, all other boasting, should also be a boasting in the cross. All exultation in anything else should be exultation in the cross. If you exult in the hope of glory you should be exulting in the cross of Christ. If you exult in tribulation because tribulation works hope, you should be exulting in the cross of Christ. If you exult in your weaknesses, or in the people of God, you should be exulting in the cross of Christ.

Why is this the case? For this reason: for redeemed sinners, every good thing – indeed every bad thing that God turns for good – was obtained for us by the cross of Christ. Apart from the death of Christ, sinners get nothing but judgment. Apart from the cross of Christ, there is only condemnation. Therefore everything that you enjoy in Christ – as a Christian, as a person who trusts Christ – is owing to the death of Christ. And all your rejoicing in all things should therefore be a rejoicing in the cross where all your blessings were purchased for you at the cost of the death of the Son of God, Jesus Christ.

One of the reasons we are not as Christ-centered and cross-saturated as we should be is that we have not realized that everything – everything good and everything bad that God turns for the good of his redeemed children was purchased by the death of Christ for us. We simply take life and breath and health and friends and everything for granted. We think it is ours by right. But the fact is that it is not ours by right.

Every blessing in life is designed to magnify the cross of Christ, or to say it another way, every good thing in life is meant to magnify Christ and him crucified. So, for example, we totaled our 1991 Dodge Spirit last week, but nobody was hurt. And in that safety I exult. I glory in that. But why was nobody hurt? That was a gift to me and my family that none of us deserves. We are sinners and by nature children of wrath, apart from Christ. So how did we come to have such a gift for our good? Answer: Christ died for our sins on the cross, and took away the wrath of God from us, and secured for us, even though we don’t deserve it, God’s omnipotent grace that works everything together for our good. So when I exult in our safety, I am exulting in the cross of Christ.

And the insurance paid us $2800 for the car and Noel took that money and went to Iowa and bought a 92 Chevy Lumina and drove it home in the snow. And now we have a car again. And I exult in the amazing grace of so much bounty. Just like that. You wreck your car. You come out unhurt. Insurance pays up. You get another one. And move on almost as if nothing happened.

And in thanks I bow my head and exult in the untold mercies even of these little material things. Where do all these mercies come from? If you are a saved sinner, a believer in Jesus, they come through the cross. Apart from the cross, there is only judgment – patience and mercy for a season, but then, if spurned, all that mercy only serves to intensify judgment. Therefore every gift is a blood-bought gift. And all boasting – all exultation – is boasting in the cross.

“One little word will fell him!”

John 12:31

Now is the judgment of this world, now shall the ruler of this world be cast out.

1 John 3:8

The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.

Hebrews 2:14

Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same nature, that through death he might destroy him who has the power of death, that is, the devil.

Colossians 2:15

[God] disarmed the principalities and powers and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in him.

John 16:8,11

When the Counselor comes he will convince the world . . . of judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged.

Acts 26:16-18

I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you to serve and bear witness . . . to open their eyes, that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.

James 4:7-8

Submit yourselves to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and he will draw near to you.

1 Peter 5:8

Resist him (Satan), firm in your faith.

Ephesians 6:11, 16

Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil . . . above all, taking the shield of faith, with which you can quench all the flaming darts of the evil one.

Colossians 1:13

He has delivered us from the dominion of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son.

1 John 2:13

I write to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one.

Revelation 12:10-11

The accuser of our brethren has been thrown down . . . And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death.

Revelation 21:10

And the devil . . .who had deceived them, was thrown into the lake of fire and brimstone where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night for ever and ever.

Romans 8:37-39

I am sure that . . . neither angels nor principalities . . . nor powers . . . will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Ammunitions specialist,

Pastor John Piper

P. S. See also Romans 16:20; Luke 22:31ff; 1 John 5:18.

Has anyone ever kept a secret from you? Maybe it was a birthday present or a special trip you were going to take or what your mom was planning to fix for dinner. If you’ve had this happen to you, then you can understand how important it is for others to tell us things that we cannot know unless they make it known. No matter how much you might want to know the secret, until someone tells you, you just cannot know what it is.

It is this way with knowing who God is. The only way that we could be thinking together about the greatness of God is because God has shared with us the secret of who he is. We cannot discover who God is or figure him out on our own. We aren’t smart enough to do this, and God is way too big for us even to try. One of the very first things we must learn about God is very humbling to us, and it is this: unless God had decided to show us who he is, unless he had chosen to make known his own life and ways, we simply could know nothing–yes, nothing!– about him. We are dependent completely on God’s kindness and goodness to make himself known to us, and for this we ought to be grateful every day of our lives. After all, there is no one more important and more wonderful to know than God. So how thankful we must be that God did not keep to himself, as it were. Rather, he showed us in rich and wonderful ways just who he is.

The Bible talks about several different ways that God has made himself known to us. One of the ways God has shown us some things about himself is through the world he has made. Ps 19:1-2 says, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge.”

And in Romans 1:19-20 Paul adds, “For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.” As these passages teach, some of the very qualities of God’s own life are shown through the world and the universe that he fashioned.

Think with me about some of the qualities of God that we can see by looking at different parts of the world in which we live. When you look closely at a flower, for example, you can see the knowledge and wisdom and beauty of God. How very, very smart God is! God is the one who figured out how to make living things grow, and they all grow according to a lot of very complicated rules that he put into every living thing. The flower we are thinking about came from a small seed, was planted in the ground and watered, and in time grew to be a beautiful, colorful flower. All of its beauty, and each of its parts, has come to be because God has designed just exactly how it would grow from that seed to the full flower. Indeed, God’s knowledge is vast, his wisdom is beyond our ability to understand, and his beauty is shown in all of the beautiful flowers, butterflies, trees, and mountains of our world.

We’ve thought about something on the small side–a flower–so why don’t we also consider something big. Think with me about the stars you can see at night. On a clear night, when you see all of those stars, it sort of takes your breath away, doesn’t it? And to think that we can see only a very, very small number of the stars that are actually there. Just in our own galaxy (the Milky Way) where the earth and solar system are located, scientists estimate that there are about ten billion stars. And the Milky Way is an average-sized galaxy in a universe that contains hundreds of millions of galaxies. Wow! We cannot understand all of this, but it shows us how great and expansive and powerful God is–he made this universe simply by speaking it into existence. Yes, the heavens surely do tell us of the glory of God. His power and wisdom and beauty and greatness–indeed, his Godness – are all seen through what he has made.

Do you remember the story of Job? Job was a very wealthy and powerful man, but to test Job, God allowed Satan to take nearly everything from Job, even giving him sores and boils on his whole body. Job wondered why this happened to him, and he came very close to blaming God. Toward the end of the book of Job, God confronted Job and humbled this man who nearly accused God of doing what was wrong. God asked of Job, “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements–surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone, when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy? (Job 38:4-7). Consider the greatness of the universe God made, and how detailed and exact everything is that God has fashioned! We truly do learn much about God’s greatness and glory just by noticing the world all around us.

Another way God has made himself known is through how he has made us, his human creatures. Many things about our own bodies–how amazing are our eyes and ears and heart and brain and on and on–also tell us about God’s wisdom and power, just as with the rest of creation. But in addition to this, God has made us with a deep inner understanding of things that are right and things that are wrong. When we lie to our brother or sister or to our parents, we can tell inside of us that this is wrong to do. When we clean up our room or take out the garbage when our mom or dad ask us to, we know in our heart that this was the right thing to do. Where did this inner understanding of right and wrong come from?

In Romans 2:14-15 Paul writes, “For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them.”

His point is this: people who don’t even have someone telling them that it’s wrong to lie or wrong to steal or wrong to murder still know in their own hearts about these things. God has taken something of his own standards of right and wrong and placed them in every human heart. So, not only is God powerful and wise and great, he also is holy and righteous and good. When we do wrong, we have no excuse, because we know from the inside that we should do what is right. God put this into our lives so that we would know about right and wrong and so that we would know that we are held responsible for what we do. But this also tells us about God–he always does what is right and good and worthy of praise. God is both great, and he is good.

In my travels I’ve had the opportunity to visit a wide variety of churches. Not long ago I was in a mainline Protestant denominational church where I couldn’t help but notice a variety of Sunday School classes that were being promoted in the foyer. On the table were a number of books to be studied in the respective classes. To say I was shocked to see a volume by the Episcopalian bishop John Shelby Spong is an understatement.

Spong has become (in)famous in recent years for his blatant and boastful denial of virtually every foundational Christian doctrine. Spong mocks belief in the incarnation of Christ, his deity, his virgin conception, his atoning death, and his bodily resurrection, just to mention a few. That any of his wretched books should be used as the basis for a Sunday School class is a sad commentary on the state of spirituality in too many churches today.

I suppose I was especially energized by the presence of this book because I happened to be preparing this meditation in Colossians at the time. Contrary to Spong and other like-minded heretics, there is hardly a more explicit affirmation of the deity of our Lord Jesus Christ than what we find in Colossians 1:19 (and again in Colossians 2:9). Here is how this verse is rendered in three different translations:

“For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell” (ESV).

“For it was the Father’s good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in Him” (NASB).

“For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him” (NIV).

Paul literally says that “all the fullness” was “pleased” to dwell in Christ. But “fullness” is not a person and only a person has conscious and willful intent; only a person can be “pleased” to do something. So both the NASB and the NIV translate the verse to indicate that God the Father is the subject of the verb: it was his good pleasure that the fullness of the divine nature dwell in Christ.

In this and subsequent meditations we are going to think deeply about this truth.

Let me begin by urging you not to be misled by the word “dwell”. Paul is not suggesting that there was a man named Jesus in whom deity or divinity resided. In other words, the fullness of deity didn’t dwell in Jesus the way the Holy Spirit dwells in you and me. When God the Son became a human, the fullness of the divine nature “became flesh” (John 1:14), yet without ceasing to be divine. The divine and the human united in the one person of Jesus Christ.

The early church wrestled with how best to articulate this marvelous and mind-bending mystery and reached its conclusions at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 a.d. Here is that portion of the statement that attempts to explain what Paul is saying in Colossians and elsewhere in the New Testament. Jesus Christ is “to be acknowledged in two natures [one divine, one human], without confusion, without change, without division, without separation; the distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved, and concurring in one Person and one Subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son, and only begotten, God the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ . . .”

The authors of this statement had three primary goals in mind.

(1) Their point in saying the two natures were not confused or changed is to prevent us from concluding that the divine and human were so united that an altogether different third thing, neither truly divine nor truly human, was created. For example, if you have a glass of water and a glass of wine and mix them together in a pitcher, you end up with something different from what you started out with. The water is now somewhat alcoholic and the wine is now somewhat diluted, but the substance in the pitcher is different from what was in either of the two glasses.

Contrary to what some in the early church suggested, the divine nature did not “swallow up” the human (as the ocean would a drop of ink), nor did the human dilute the divine into something less than truly God.

(2) Their point in saying there was neither separation nor distinction is to prevent us from concluding that the divine and human natures in Christ were artificially bonded, almost like one would glue together two separate pieces of wood. There was more than an external “connection” between the divine and human: there was and is a true union of the two.

(3) Finally, they wanted to be certain that the union between the divine and human not be construed in such a way that we think of the incarnate Christ as if he were two separate persons. He is one person, wholly divine and wholly human, neither less divine because he has a human nature nor less human because he has a divine nature.

Yes, I know it’s mind-boggling! But if our Lord Jesus Christ were anything less or other than the God-man, one person who is truly divine and truly human, we would still be in our sin.

Marveling in the Mystery,

Sam

It must have been cold in John Newton’s study as he prepared his sermon during the last week of December, 1773. From his second-floor retreat, Newton could see the church at Olney, England, where he would preach on New Years’ Day, just as he did every Sunday. His habit was to write a hymn to correspond with the sermon each week as way to help his mostly-illiterate congregation review the Bible lesson. The text for this week was 1 Chronicles 17:16:

And David the king came and sat before the LORD, and said, “Who am I, O LORD God, and what is mine house, that thou hast brought me hitherto?”

In meditating on his text, the forty-eight-year-old Newton surely asked along with King David, “Who am I that you have brought me here?”

As a young man, John Newton was a sailor, like his father before him. He went to sea for the first time on his father’s ship when he was just 11 years old. By the time John was 17, his father was ready to retire from the sea-faring life and anxious to see his son in a good position, but John didn’t fit easily into the discipline his vocation required. He was sometimes days late in reporting for duty. He created bawdy and disrespectful songs and taught them to his shipmates. He drank too much and boasted. He deserted his ship and generally caused so much trouble that one captain traded him to another ship in mid-voyage, just to be rid of him.

In 1748 John stopped sailing for two years and went into the African slave-selling business with a man named Clow. Together they took longboats into the African interior and paid natives to capture men, women, and children. Newton and Clow transported these victims to the coast, where they were sold at great profit to waiting slave ships. It was a dangerous business, and soon Newton contacted malaria in the swampy inland.
Clow and his wife seized this opportunity to abuse and enslave Newton, starving him and leaving him bound and exposed to the elements for days at a time. Even the black slaves on the island where he was held took pity on Newton and sometimes shared their food with him. Newton, however, did not return the slaves’ compassion for the helpless until much later in his life.

Some associates of Newton’s father intervened and helped gain his release from Clow. Newton immediately sailed back to England on a merchant ship. On his next voyage, Newton was the mate on a slave ship headed to Africa. After learning the trade, Newton became the captain of his own slave ship and spent the next seven years transporting kidnapped men, women, and children from Africa to England. He later said that at the time, he never questioned the morality of this form of commerce. His conscience was clear, though he eventually came to see slavery as corrupt and worked in the British Abolition movement.

It’s hard to pinpoint when Newton met Christ. According to his own testimony, he “took up and laid down his religious profession” regularly during his sea-faring years, usually taking it up after a brush with death and gradually letting go over the course of his months at sea.

Nonetheless, gradually and certainly a change was noticed in the life of John Newton. First he quit blaspheming, gambling, and drinking and spent hours in Bible study and prayer. Later he instituted Sunday worship services on his ship. He resisted the common temptation to take advantage of the women slaves under his control and he forbade his crew from abusing them. On one trip to Africa, he made peace with the woman who mistreated and enslaved him during his illness, and on another trip he tried to mentor a sailor he had led astray many years earlier. Grace had found John Newton.
After retiring from the sea for medical reasons, Newton spent a few years working for the government, and then was ordained into the ministry in 1764. Nearly ten years later, as the much older and wiser Newton reflected on his life in his chilly study, he penned the following lines:

Amazing grace! (How sweet the sound)
That sav’d a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.

‘Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,
And grace my fears reliev’d;
How precious did that grace appear,
The hour I first believ’d!

Thro’ many dangers, toils and snares,
I have already come;
‘Tis grace has brought me safe thus far,
And grace will lead me home

Yes, when this flesh and heart shall fail,
And mortal life shall cease;
I shall possess, within the veil,
A life of joy and peace.

Shortly before Newton died in 1807, he said:

My memory is nearly gone; but I remember two things: That I am a great sinner, and that Christ is a great Savior.

The bible is filled from beginning to end with statements of what God is able to do and will do for those who are His people. Here are seven verses which, when put together, cover almost all the fundamental doctrines of Christianity.

1. Hebrews 7:25 in one sense includes all the rest. It tells us that Jesus Christ “is able for all time to save those who draw near to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them.” Mel Trotter, an evangelist of an earlier generation whom God had called from a life of alcoholism, said that this was his verse; it told of God’s ability to save a person “from the guttermost to the uttermost.” That is our story also. It covers the past, present and future of salvation.

1. In 2 Timothy 1:12 Paul writes, “For I know whom I have believed and I am sure that He is able to guard until that Day what has been entrusted to me.” The metaphor is that of banking, and the verse literally means “God has the power to keep my spiritual deposits.” He will not disappoint us.
2. Next, 2 Corinthians 9:8 says, “God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that you may always have enough of everything and may provide in abundance for every good work.” Some Christians think that the salvation of a man or woman by God is for the future only, more or less a “pie in the sky by and by” philosophy. Not so. The Bible tells us that God’s grace is available to help us in every good work now. It is in this life that we are to abound in His sufficiency.

1. We are also told that God is able to help us in times of temptation. The Bible says of Jesus, “Because He Himself has suffered and been tempted, He is able to help those who are tempted” (Hebrews 2:18). The best commentary on this verse is found in Scripture; we are told elsewhere that although temptation is the common human lot, God does not allow us to be tempted above our capacity to resist it, and, what is more, has provided a means of escape even before the temptation comes upon us (1 Corinthians 10:13).

1. Ephesians 3:20 tells us that God is able to help us grow spiritually. It is in the form of a benediction. “Now to Him who by the power at work within us is able to do far more abundantly than all we ask or think, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, for ever and ever. Amen.”

1. God’s ability to save also extends to our bodies. The Lord Jesus Christ “will change our lowly body to be like His glorious body, by the power which enables Him even to subject all things to Himself” (Philippians 3:21)

1. Finally, in another verse that is also a great benediction, Jude says, “Now to Him who is able to keep you from falling and to present you without blemish before the presence of His glory with rejoicing, to the only God, our Savior through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen” (Jude 24-25)

Taken together, these verses declare that God is able to save us for this life and for eternity, to keep us from falling into sin and temptation, to lead us to the best in human experience and to satisfy us completely. Are these things true? Yes…but for one reason only. They are true because they are the eternal and immutable counsel of the God who is sovereign.

The worship team and prayer teams gathered around me and prayed for me before I preached. Greg remarked that God was up all night working on this service and the people who would be there—including me. He thanked the Lord for this and praised him for his unwearying work on our behalf.

O what truth this is! For every Christian. Let me encourage you with it. Psalm 121:2-3 says it plainly: “My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth. He will not let your foot be moved, he who keeps you will not slumber.” The one who helps you never sleeps. He stays up all night, every night.

Do you need help? I do. Where do you look for help? When the Psalmist lifted up his eyes to the hills and asked, “From where does my help come?” he answered, “My help comes from the Lord”—not from the hills, but from the God who made the hills. So he reminded himself of two great truths: one is that God is a mighty Creator over all the problems of life; the other is that God never sleeps.

God is a tireless Worker. Think of God as a Worker in your life. Yes, it is amazing. We are prone to think of ourselves as workers in God’s life. But the Bible wants us first to be amazed that God is a Worker in our lives: “From of old no one has heard or perceived by the ear, no eye has seen a God besides thee, who works for those who wait for him” (Isaiah 64:4).

God is working for us around the clock. He does not take days off and he does not sleep. In fact he is so eager to work for us that he goes around looking for more work to do for people who will trust him: “The eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show his might in behalf of those whose heart is whole toward him” (2 Chronicles 16:9).

God loves to show his tireless power and wisdom and goodness by working for people who trust him. Jesus was the main way the Father showed this: “The Son of man came not to be served but to serve” (Mark 10:45). Jesus works for his followers. He serves them.

He keeps on doing this now that he is risen and reigning with the Father in heaven. Paul experienced this in a powerful way: “I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has worked through me to win obedience from the Gentiles, by word and deed” (Romans 15:18). Christ worked for Paul all his life. At the very end of his life, in his last letter, he said, “The Lord stood by me and gave me strength to proclaim the message fully” (2 Timothy 4:17). Through all his life Paul could say, “I can do all things through him who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13). Jesus is the great Worker, the great strength-giver.

The eagerness of God to work for us is amazing. His eyes are running to and fro, looking for opportunities to work for people who trust him. And he is “pursuing us with goodness and mercy all our days” (Psalm 23:6). He is not just waiting for us to get his help, he is seeking ways to give us help. And he is doing this with overflowing eagerness. “I will not turn away from doing good to them; and I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may not turn from me. I will rejoice in doing them good … with all my heart and all my soul” (Jeremiah 32:40-41).

No wonder he stays up all night. With all his heart and all his soul he works for those who wait for him and trust him. This is what we must believe—really believe—in order to “rejoice always” (Philippians 4:4) and “give thanks in everything” (Ephesians 5:20) and have the “peace that passes understanding” (Philippians 4:7), and “be anxious for nothing” (Philippians 4:6) and “hate our lives in this world” (John 12:25) and “love our neighbor as we love ourselves” (Matthew 22:39).

What a truth! What a reality! God is up all night and all day to work for those who wait for him.

Reveling,

Pastor John Piper