Lord we gather together today with thanksgiving for the firmament that declares the glory of God and the mighty works of your hands.

And Lord, we gather together also to give thanks for 20 years of ministry of a man who has taught

us to be God glorifying, God centered, God exulting, and everything that we do from drinking orange juice to recognizing the blessings of a life and pondering the influence it has on us and untold numbers of people. And in these few minutes we want to honor not

the man, but the man's God who created the firmament and John Piper and has sustained his life for over 54 years.

Thank you for Ruth and Bill Piper who brought John to Jesus and taught him the fear of the Lord and who gave him Galatians 220 on his 15th birthday, which you've used

to shape him and inspire him to live by faith in the son of God who loved him and delivered himself

up for him.

Thank you for laying him aside with mono in 1966

and for using the biblical exposition of John Harold Ackengue

to grip his heart with a desire to teach and to preach the word.

Thank you for the light you shed on the word of God and for the overwhelming discoveries of the sovereignty of God and the years of theological shaping at Fuller and then at the University of Munich.

Thank you for six years of fruitful Bible teaching at Bethel and for all the wrestling on Romans 9 which ignited a passion to herald the word of God and witness its power to create authentic people.

Thank you for opening the pulpit at Bethlehem at just the right time and for directing the will of that search

committee to extend a call to John to be our pastor. Thank you for sustaining John

with 20 years of grace to do what no man could do apart from you. Thank you for 20 years of faithful prayer and for multiplied hours of preparation which have yielded a thousand Sundays of sermons and 72 Advent poems and untold numbers of classes and seminars and

Bible studies and wedding homilies and funeral meditations and devotions off the front

burner which have nourished our heads and our hearts and produced a hope

in God and a desire for God and a hunger for God and a joy in Christ and a reliance on the Holy

Spirit and the love for the truth, and the strength, and the Lord,

and a knowledge, and an understanding of your word, and a grace for every circumstance,

and a longing for heaven, and a white-hot passion for the supremacy of God in all things and a glorious

vision of an all-satisfying God who is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him,

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