You're like farmers.

farmers.

farmers want crops to grow and they can't make them grow.

Only God can make them grow.

But they can plow and they can plant and they should.

Listen to the way Paul puts it, 1 Corinthians 3.6.

I planted Apollo's Apollo's watered, but God gave the growth.

And we could just substitute God gave the joy.

If joy is a supernatural gift, how do we deepen our joy in God? In this

episode of Light and Truth, John Piper surveys various scriptures to show that we

fight for increased joy by resting in the right place.

This message was originally given

at the Desiring God Regional Conference

in Greenville, South Carolina

on August 19, 2005.

I remember one conversation I had with a

conversation I had with a seminary president

critiquing the term and the vision that I call Christian

hedonism and he had it fixed in his was that the philosophical meaning for the word hedonism was that happiness becomes the criterion for right and wrong and that is one of the historic meanings

for the word hedonism. A hedonist in the old Greek sense was somebody who said

whatever makes you happy is right and whatever makes you unhappy is wrong.

And so he took that definition and put it on my term and said that's a bad idea Piper you shouldn't be promoting

...