John is the author of more than 30 books including Desiring God, Don’t Waste Your Life, This Momentary Marriage, and Spectacular Sins, and more than 25 years of his preaching and teaching is available for download at. For six years he taught biblical studies at Bethel College in Minnesota, and in 1980 accepted the call to serve as pastor at Bethlehem. He went on to earn degrees from Fuller Theological Seminary (BD) and the University of Munich (DTheol). He grew up in Greenville, South Carolina, and studied at Wheaton College, where he first sensed God’s call to enter the ministry. John Piper is pastor for preaching and vision at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis.

This version includes the same content as the revised and expanded edition published in 2000. In other words, we will be most satisfied in God when we know why God is most satisfied in God. If God's excellencies can be admired in his pleasures, and if we tend to become like what we admire and enjoy, then focusing on these pleasures can help us to be gradually conformed to his likeness. What most delights the happiest Being in the universe? God's gladness in being God. In this reissued version with a new cover design, John Piper unfolds for us a vision of God through the lens of his happiness. Therefore, God's pleasure in hiding this from 'the wise and intelligent' and revealing it to 'infants' is the pleasure of God in both his glory and our joy.Product Description: One way to see the glory of God is to meditate upon the object of his delight. If he revealed himself to the proud and self-sufficient and not to the humble and dependent, he would belittle the very glory whose worth is the foundation of our joy. God is the one being for whom self-exaltation is an infinitely loving act. Therefore, his commitment to uphold and display his glory is not vain, but virtuous. He alone is the source of full and lasting pleasure. Therefore, if God wants to love us infinitely and delight us fully and eternally, he must preserve for us the one thing that will satisfy us totally and eternally namely, the presence and worth of his own glory. And this joy is owing to the presence of God, not the accomplishments of man. Nothing is fuller than full, and nothing is longer than eternal. This is plain from Psalm 16:11: 'You will make known to me the path of life in Your presence is fullness of joy in Your right hand there are pleasures forever.' Fullness of joy and eternal joy cannot be improved.

The Pleasures of God by John Piper