What I'd like to do now is simply to introduce our speaker for the next session.

John Piper is the pastor for preaching and vision at Bethlehem Baptist Church and he's

been there since 1980.

He grew up in Greenville, South Carolina and he went to school at Wheaton,

College and Fuller Seminary in the University of Munich. He's married to Noel. He has four sons and one daughter and he'll be speaking to us today on the life of Robert Murray McShane.

We oftentimes in these biographical, or excuse me, in these speaker introductions, we'll talk about the books that the speaker has authored and John has I think 30 or maybe even over 30 now but this year we've it's been a

real joy to just come back to this book you know it was 25 years ago and you heard

John's journal entry read to you this morning. It was 25 years ago that

desiring God was published and I was thinking just backstage a little while ago that how God has used this book and how God

has used the ministry of John through this book over and over in my own life and what a

debt I have as it were to you John. But how this book has shaped so many of us and

we just can give thanks to God for the writing ministry of John and thankful for this particular book and this is just a special year

for us as a ministry as we rally back to the fountain as it were the original sort of vision of God that got it all going so many years ago.

So thank you for being a part of that, even in your presence here.

And I would love for you to join me now

as we welcome John Piper to speak to us for the next hour. Let's pray together.

Father in Heaven as we rivet our attention now for a few minutes on Robert Murray-McCane's God and his God's work in his life.

I pray that we would be inspired and that all the good things we've been hearing concerning a life of prayer and devotion and Christ-centeredness would take a step further down deep into our hearts and that we would experience kinds of resolve here, kinds of longings and hopes and aches,

that would not be a flash in the pan but would be deeply rooted,

and so last for the rest of our lives.

So come and make more use of this time than could have been had you not been here in great power.

I ask this in Jesus name, amen.

...