Book Review: Don't Waste Your Life

BIOGRAPHICAL ENTRY Piper, John, Don’t Waste Your Life, Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2003, pp. 189 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF AUTHOR John Piper is teacher and founder of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College and Seminary. He served for 33 years as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis and is author of more than 50 books, Including When I Don’t Desire God, This Momentary Marriage, Does God Desire All to Be Saved?, and Bloodlines. SUMMARY OF CONTENTS Chapter 1: “My Search for a Single Passion to Live By.” In chapter 1, Piper recounts his early childhood as the son of a fiery preacher. His father had many stories for people of all ages in the church. One story told of an old man who finally gave his life to Christ. The man held the preacher’s hand and cried saying, “I’ve wasted it! I’ve wasted it!” This story awakened in Piper a fear and a passion not to waste his life. In college Piper intended to pursue a career as a medical doctor. However, he became sick with mono (mononucleosis). He heard the preaching of Harold John Ockenga in chapel. He came to the reality that God was calling him to seminary. Chapter 2: “Breakthrough-the Beauty of Christ, My Joy.” In chapter 2 Piper writes about his early days while attending seminary. He is confronted by various philosophical teaching about the existence of God. What is Reality? Is it something that has no objective meaning? As he struggles with whether or not God is dead, Piper discovers the preaching and teaching of Jonathan Edwards. He says of Edwards: “His life is inspiring because of his zeal not to waste it, and because of his passion for the supremacy of God” (p. 29).Through Edwards Piper learns that the glory of God and man’s joy are one. We glorify God when we enjoy God. We live to make God the joy of all that we do in every sphere of life. God showed us love by giving His Son to die for our sins. We glorify God when we make this love known to others and have joy in what Christ has done for us. Chapter 3: “Boasting Only in the Cross, The Blazing Center of the Glory of God.” Piper builds on what was said in chapter 2. Each Christian is to have the gift of passion for life. Christ purchased us by His death on the cross. In Christ we die to the old self, and we live to the new self that we have in Christ. Everything that we have joy in is centered in our joy in knowing Christ, and His love demonstrated to us by His death on the cross. Chapter 4: “Magnifying Christ through Pain and Death.” We magnify Christ in pain and death. We magnify Christ in our sufferings because Christ suffered and died on the cross, and He call us to deny ourselves, take up our cross every day and follow Jesus. We magnify Christ in both living and dying when we treasure our love for Christ. Here Piper explains Paul’s statement to the Philippians: “To live is Christ, and to die is gain.” When we experience pain we are to treasure Christ more pain-free living. Chapter 5: “Risk Is Right—Better to Lose Your Life Than to Waste It.” We live our lives with risk, because we are ignorant of the outcome of our decisions. God cannot take a risk because His omniscience means that He has knowledge of the outcome of His plans. We must be made free by the power of the Holy Spirit from the myths of safety and security. It is wrong to take risks for personal glory. It is right to take risks for the glory of Christ. Nothing good or bad that takes place in our lives is able to separate us from the love of god in Christ Jesus. Chapter 6: “The Goal of Life—Gladly Making Others Glad in God.” Forgiving other is necessary for us to take risks to make others glad in God. God forgives us so that the obstacles that prevent us from enjoying Him are removed. When God forgives us it is not for us to find joy in a list of benefits to ourselves; rather it is so that we can experience God and find joy in Him. Chapter 7: “Living to Prove He Is More Precious Than Life.” If we want people to be glad in God we must live a lifestyle that demonstrates that we have more pleasure in God than in our possessions. If we are glad in possessions, we are no different from the world and people will not ask us why we have hope in God. We must live a “wartime lifestyle” in which we battle between taking pleasures in what the world does, or pleasure in God. Like soldiers fighting in the war we must be willing to sacrifice for others so that they can see that Christ is great and they find pleasure in God in every aspect of their life. Chapter 8: “Making Much of Christ from 8 to 5.” The call to be a Christian is not a call to leave a secular vocation to take on a church vocation. Both are to be used to joyfully magnify Christ. God created humans in His image and gave them work to do so that they can show what God is like in their work. God’s people are to be scattered like salt and light in all legitimate vocations. Our work does not replace the need for the Gospel. Our work is an adornment of the doctrine of God when people know that we are Christians when we speak the Gospel. “Secular work is not a waste of life when we make much of Christ from 8 to 5” (154). Chapter 9: “The Majesty of Christ in Missions and Mercy—A Plea to This Generation.” In chapter 9 Piper calls Christians to consider their roles in worldwide mission. Christians can participate by being “senders” or by becoming “goers” to mission fields where the Gospel has not been heard. Christ died to save all people and he commissioned His disciples to take the Gospel to all people of every ethnic group. Chapter 10: “My Prayer—Let None Say in the End, “I’ve Wasted It.”” God created us in His image so that our greatest joy is found in glorifying God. The evil one tricked Eve into thinking that her greatest joy was in knowing that God’s love for her was to make much of herself and not much of God. When Jesus is our treasure and we help others to find joy in Christ we have not wasted our life. CRITICAL EVALUATION In “don’t waste your life” Piper gives us needed tools to develop more fully our relationship to Christ. This book can inspire all believers to find joy in magnifying Christ. Piper helps us to set priorities in our lie; and namely to make Christ the joy of our life. I found chapters 4, 8, and 9 of personal interest. In chapter 4 Piper helps us to understand that pain and suffering and life and death can magnify God when we find joy in Christ during these difficult times. Chapter 8 helps us to know that secular vocations can be useful for magnifying Christ and helping others to see Christ as one to be enjoyed. Chapter 9 helps us to know that our personal life is part of God’s global plan to save people throughout the world through missions in which the Gospel is given in places where the Gospel is not available. The most valuable thing for me was that Piper helps us to connect all of the different aspects of our life together so that we find joy in magnifying Christ and joy in helping others to be glad in God. We will not waste our life if Christ is our treasure and we live to glorify Him.