I'm not a Christian because I attend church on Sunday, and neither are you, and neither

is John Piper.

This was a discovery Piper made in the opening pages of a book by C.S. Lewis.

In God's Providence, a thin little blue book by the title, The Weight of Glory, found

his way into Piper's life at age 23.

Here's how you recounted the story in a 2015 sermon.

One way that broke over me in my 23rd year was the discovery that my desires were not

too strong, but too weak, and the remedy for my early perplexity did not lie in getting

rid of my desires, but on glutting them on God.

That was revolutionary to me.

Your problem longing, aching, yearning, wanting, John Piper is that you don't yet want,

like you want to want.

I will come to you, and I will put a fire under the fire of want, you will not want, you

will not want, what is, I'll show you what, what is, and he puts his glory in front

of you and fills you with his Holy Spirit, and you discover what is.

C.S. Lewis was the one who unlocked the door.

I'm standing in Vrooman's bookstore on Colorado Avenue, having read, I think, Mir Christianity

and that was all in college.

I look at a table, I think they were on sale or something, while they're out on the

table, a little blue book called The Weight of Glory by C.S. Lewis.

I pick it up and open to the first page and read this.

The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself.

...