Desiring God book review

“Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist, Revised Edition” by John Piper is somewhere between a must-read and an absolutely-must-read.

After finding out what a “Christian hedonist” is, and why that’s something desirable, I took my pastor’s advice and read the chapters at random, picking a topic that applied to my needs the most at the time. I must say, I’ve never read a book like that before, but I highly recommend it, at least for this one. When I was studying on worship, I read the “worship” chapter. When our church was discussing missions, I read the “missions” chapter, and so on.

There is a lot in this book, and the chapters are long and sometimes hard to comprehend, but never once did I want to put the book down in the middle of a chapter. I think what I took away the most was from the chapter on love. John Piper put a whole new spin on 1 Corinthians 13 that I’d never thought of before, and that true love brings joy, and true joy glorifies God, and man‘s chief end is to glorify God. Like I said, there’s lots to think about packed in this book.

The only differences I could tell between this Revised Edition and the 2003 edition is the omission of 4 appendices, the addition of a study guide in the back, and the taller but thinner size of the book. [An interesting note for you visual learners: the words are printed in the exact same spot on the same number of pages as the 2003 edition!]

I received a free copy of this book from Waterbrook Multnomah publishers in exchange for an honest review.