The God Who Empowers Obedience

Light + Truth

Desiring God

Christianity, Religion & Spirituality/christianity, Religion & Spirituality

4.7 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 5 December 2025

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

What if even your simplest obedience revealed God’s power at work? In this episode of Light + Truth, John Piper opens 1 Peter 4:11 to show who empowers the good we do.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	You really need to learn that the good you do means God is really at work in your life.
0:15.0	You know, we're so Armenian to the core as humans that we don't recognize that when we do a simple good
0:23.6	thing like don't beat your children or don't slap your wife around God's at work in your life?
0:29.6	Or if you come up with anything, any good idea to go somewhere on time maybe? That's God at work?
0:46.9	We don't often think of showing up on time or speaking gently as evidence of divine empowerment.
0:49.0	But what if they are?
0:50.7	I'm Dan Kroover.
0:54.7	In this episode of Light and Truth, John Piper helps us notice and celebrate the quiet ways God is working obedience into our lives.
1:03.0	This talk was originally delivered at Bethlehem Baptist Church on Wednesday evening, September 18, 1991.
1:21.6	Well, his primary longing is to demonstrate, to display his glory for the enjoyment of his creature. If you define God's longings as the longings born not of need, but of fullness, then the only way to understand them is that they are longings of this outwardness. I want the spread of who I am. I want people to see. I want people to enjoy. I want there to be a reverberating back to me of all that I am. That's the overarching desire of the Lord.
1:47.5	And every other desire, I think, is just a sub-species of that one desire. We're commanded
1:54.0	to glorify God in everything that we do, 1st Corinthians 1031. And that means that God's one
2:00.1	desire and longing for us is that we glorify
2:02.6	him and all that we do so I mean I could say a lot more because there are a lot of species of that
2:09.3	desire I mean the Bible is just replete with hundreds and hundreds of statements where God
2:14.3	wants this I mean the 10 commandments are 10 longings of God, I would say.
2:18.5	He longs for nobody to commit adultery. He longs for nobody to kill, steal, lie, covet,
2:28.1	goof around in lustful or worldly ways on Sunday, et cetera.
2:37.3	So, I mean, the list could just go on and on.
2:40.3	Sermon on the Mount expresses God's longings.
2:42.5	Ultimately, they will not be frustrated.
2:45.6	He allows himself to be short-term frustrated all over the place.
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 9 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Desiring God, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Desiring God and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.