my current book.

Well, I'm officially admitting to the cold, hard fact that I'm a terrible blogger. When was my last post even, like in early spring?!?! All of you out there who are super-star bloggers are probably wondering if I'll ever get my blogging act together... Sad to say - probably not. However, I'm not throwing the towell in quite yet... I think I like the idea of just blogging randomly, anyway... keeps people on their toes, right... all two of you who actually read this ;~P haha

Well, this particular blog is born out of inspiration... From one of the books I'm reading. Yes, you read that correctly. By no means am I tooting any invisible horns by mentioning that I'm reading more than one book at a time. Although, I do keep up with my books more regularly than my blog, I'm not ashamed to admit that sometimes a page will be dog-eared for several weeks before I move it over another chapter or two.

Anywho - so the latest book I've started (and hopefully will finish in record time), is John Piper's new book God is the Gospel. I just want to share an excerpt from the introduction (even though I am actually past the introduction, mind you ;) ).

I hope it wakes you up, the way it did me.

The sad thing is that a radically man-centered view of love permeates our culture and our churches. From the time they can toddle we teach our children that feeling loved means feeling made much of. We have built whole educational philosophies around this view of love - curricula, parenting skills, motivational strategies, theraputic models, and selling techniques. Most modern people can scarcely imnagine an alternative understanding of feeling loved other than feeling made much of. If you don't make much of me you are not loving me.

But when you apply this definition of love to God, it weakens his worth, undermines his goodness, and steals our final satisfaction. If the enjoyment of God himself is not the final and best gift of love, then God is not the greatest treasure, his self-giving is not the highest mercy, the gospel is not the good news that sinners may enjoy their Maker, Chirst did not suffer to bring us to God, and our souls must look beyond him for satisfaction.

This distortion of divine love into an endorsement of self-admiration is subtle. It creeps into our most religious acts. We claim to be praising God because he loves us. But if his love for us is at bottom his making much of us, who is really being praised? We are willing to be God-centered, it seems, as long as God is man-centered. We are willing to boast in the cross as long as the cross is a witness to our worth. Who then is our pride and joy?

Wow - that's a lot to process... for me, anyway. I pray, by the grace of God, to always be mold-able, a [divine] work-in-progress... but may I/we progress at the pace intended for ourselves, and not stumble so much along the way that something crucial is missed.