Many have read John Piper’s Desiring God. I’m actually reading another of Piper’s books which is really a flip side to the coin.  It’s entitled, When I Don’t Desire God.  I selected this book because firstly my wife wanted to do a book study with me, and secondly because many times I find I don’t deisre God or doing the things that pleases God.  Don’t get me wrong I try my best to do the things that God finds pleasing, but I don’t always feel a driving desire to do them.

Piper explains that this is something we must fight for.  We must pray fervently to God and plead with Him to instill in us the desire for Him.  Piper makes some seemingly contradictory assertions; he says that we are ordered to “Rejoice in the Lord” yet we cannot rejoice in the Lord because we are by nature sinful people.  That in fact we cannot rejoice in the Lord unless God bestows upon us the gift of rejoicing in the Lord.  And further that we are not less guilty of breaking the commandment to rejoice in the Lord because of this fact, bat all the more guilty because of this fact.  Piper points out that our prayers should take on urgency because of this.  We should be even more grateful because of the gifts God gives us.

We should be thankful to God not just for life, not just for salvation, not just for Christ, but for the very belief that we have, for the joy that we feel, for everything that we have, that we do, that we are is a gift from God.