Given the fact that the human heart is designed for God and given the likelihood that

the mass of humanity will not yet give heed to God, still the human heart will not go on being

satisfied with a tiny world of the Self. It will have to have a better substitute than therapy.

It must have a better substitute. Since we were not made for the tiny world of the Self,

what should Christian preaching actually do? That's the question John Piper answers in this first

episode of Light and Truth as we begin a four-part series titled God-centered preaching. This series was

originally preached in February 1999 to a group of pastors in Kansas City, Missouri.

Father, I want to ask and plead for your help so that what I do here will not be done

in my own strength, nor that the hearing would be done in the strength of the hearers,

but that you would come and that you would give me, I'm anointing for this work that is

powerful and protecting, guard me from error and from pride and from imbalance and anything that

is unbiblical or unhelpful. Grant, Lord Jesus, that Satan would be frustrated in his designs to

distort or deflect the truth and I pray that hearts would be opened the way you opened

Lydia's heart to give heed to the truth and that people would be able to look back on this time as

an epoch-making time in their lives so that here we saw you and here we met you and here we

discovered things about you that made all the difference. So draw near and help me and us

in this regard. I pray in Jesus' name, amen. I have a real tentative theory about the relationship

between the 20th century and the 21st century and it's very tentative. I'm not claiming any kind

of authority for this idea, but here it is. I see the 20th century, at least in the West and at

least in its latter half as being the century of the self or the century of the therapeutic

or the century of psychology or whatever you want to articulate it in those categories.

1966 Philip Reef wrote a book The Triumph of the Therapeutic and if it was so 30 years ago it's

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