The first reason for why you should make it your passion, your lifelong enterprise to pursue your joy in God, is that there is nothing in the world that can satisfy besides the beauty of God.

Nothing that he gives can satisfy. Only God can satisfy. You have a God

shaped, void in your heart made for him, and until he fills it, it will not be full forever. Have you ever gotten something you really desired,

and within a few days, maybe even a few hours, it didn't feel the same anymore? That cycle can be

exhausting.

And John Piper says there's a reason for that.

We were made for someone infinitely better.

I'm your host, Dan Kroover.

In this episode of Light and Truth, John Piper shows why only God himself can fill

what he calls that God-shaped void in the human heart.

This message was originally delivered at Columbia International University on Friday, February 26, 1999.

The search is on through spiritual laborers.

So what I want to do in this last session together is to go back to where we began and talk

about what I believe the heart of spirituality is in the labor of the gospel

in terms that are not altogether common and yet I believe are thoroughly biblical and in their difference

sometimes are used by the Holy Spirit to awaken people to a fresh hunger and experience of satisfaction in the Lord that we just heard about.

Spirituality, I think, consists fundamentally in being satisfied with God.

And therefore, I think the essence of all worship and all true virtue is to pursue your own happiness in God,

or to put it negatively to the degree that you attempt to abandon the pursuit of your own joy in God.

To that degree will you strive against worship and strive against love?

Which sounds exactly the opposite of what we are often told, namely that in order to love,

we must stop pursuing our own joy, our own satisfaction.

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