Today we talk about the various stages of progress in John Piper's becoming a Christian hedonist and the excellent question comes in the form of an email. "Hello Pastor John, my name is Alanna. Can you retell the story of your own journey into Christian hedonism? I recall you mentioning C.S.

Lewis being a major influence on you through one of his books, but what has been the defining moments for you in this pursuit of the all-satisfying joy in Jesus?" I've got 10 steps in the story and I'll try to say them quickly. Number one, my father was the happiest man I've ever known.

I grew up in that home, no doubt it had an impact. Number two, my father and my mother constantly cited 1 Corinthians 10 31, "Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God." So I knew I've got happy parents and they're telling me constantly to pursue the glory of God.

Number three, no one made the connection for me between my joy and God's glory in any biblical or theological way that I can remember. They just kind of dangled. Number four, unresolved tension all through college between I want to be happy and I could no more desire the want to be happy than I could stop myself from getting hungry.

I think God put the desire for happiness in the human soul as a good thing rooted in our very human nature. So there it was, I couldn't do anything about it and I had in the Bible and in my parents' memory God demands that he be glorified and those two things were in constant unresolved tension.

Maybe I'm just weird, but they were. How does my passion to be happy and God's passion to be glorified fit together? Number five, the fall of 1968, first year in seminary, 22 years old, fall of 1968, a process of discovery was opened that lasted several years in which C.S.

Lewis, Daniel Fuller and Jonathan Edwards conspired to make me a Christian hedonist. Number six, it was the first step of that process. Maybe the first step was seeing the pointer to this in Daniel Fuller's syllabus on hermeneutics, but here's the actual encounter. So the weight of glory, Froman's Bookstore, Colorado Avenue, one afternoon, fall of 1968, opened up and here's the page I read.

The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself. We are told to deny ourselves and take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ. And nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire.

I was starting to get pins and needles running up and down my spine when I read that. And here comes, here's what's next. If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing.

Now, that was me. That was me. I had this lurking sense. That's not a good thing. That's why they didn't fit together. He says, I submit this notion has crept in from Kant, Immanuel Kant, the philosopher, and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Whoa, you're kidding me.

Indeed, he goes on. If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. I had never heard anybody say that in my life. Your problem, Piper, is you don't have strong enough desires.

I had never heard anybody say that. He goes on. We are half-hearted creatures fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in the slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.

Last sentence, we are far too easily pleased. And that was the title of an entire section in Daniel Fuller's hermeneutic syllabus. We are far too easily pleased. And it was a diagnosis of my soul that I had never heard before. Step number seven, reflections on the Psalms, C.S. Lewis, page 93, helped me put the final touch on vertical Christian hedonism.

And it went like this. The most obvious fact about praise, whether of God or anything, strangely escaped me. I thought of it in terms of compliment, approval, or giving honor. I had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise, unless, sometimes even if, shyness or the fear of boring others is deliberately brought in to check it.

The world rings with praise, lovers praising their mistresses, readers their favorite poet, walkers praising the countryside, players praising their favorite game, praise of weather, wines, dishes, actors, motors, horses, colleges, countries, historical personages, children, flowers, mountains, rare stamps, rare beetles, even sometimes politicians and scholars. I had not noticed how the humblest and at the same time the most balanced and capacious minds praised most, while the cranks, misfits, and malcontents praised least.

I had not noticed either that just as men spontaneously praise what they value, so they spontaneously urge us to join them in praising it. Isn't she lovely? Wasn't it glorious? Don't you think that magnificent? The psalmists, in telling everyone to praise God, are doing what all men do when they speak of what they care about.

My whole more general difficulty about the praise of God depended on my absurdly denying to us as regards the supremely valuable what we delight to do, what we indeed can't help doing about everything else we value. And here it comes. I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment.

It is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are. The delight is incomplete till it is expressed." I had never heard that before either. So one thing was clear. God's commanding praise, commanding that he be praised, was for our good because it was the consummation of our joy in him.

But it took, this is number eight, it took Jonathan Edwards to bring me to the even more important realization that we should pursue joy in God because it is the essence and heart of praise. In other words, not only is praise the consummation of joy, the completion of joy, joy in its fullness, but joy is the essence of praise.

You're not praising God if you're not enjoying God. And that's what so many people miss. And I got it from Edwards. Here's the way he said it. God glorifies himself toward the creature in two ways. This is from his Miscellanies. One, by appearing to their understanding. Two, by communicating himself to their hearts and in their rejoicing and delighting in and enjoying the manifestations which he makes of himself.

God is glorified not only by his glory being seen, but by its being rejoiced in. Which brought me to the clear statement, God is most glorified in me when I am most satisfied in him. And all these discoveries from Lewis and Edwards were confirmed throughout the Bible. And if we had time, we could take text after text to show them.

But let me just give the last step in my pilgrimage. All this left me to work out especially how vertical Christian hedonism, namely, God is most glorified in me when I'm most satisfied in him. That doesn't take anybody else into account. How that vertical Christian hedonism worked together with horizontal Christian hedonism.

Namely, you can't love other people if you abandon your quest for joy in God. Say that again, because it sounds really controversial when people hear it. If you abandon your quest for joy in God, you can't love horizontally. You can't love other people. Why not? Because love is the overflow of joy in God that meets the needs of others.

Second Corinthians 8, 2. You can read that for yourself. Or here it is more precisely. You can see this if you just think about it. Joy in God has in it by nature, joy in God has built in it as God designed it. Say it again, joy in God has in it an expansive impulse to increase itself by drawing others into our experience of it, even if it costs us our lives.

And so the rest of my life has been spent working out all the relations and all the applications of those discoveries. Amen. A lifetime of discoveries to come. An incredible story, Pastor John. Thank you for sharing it here. That great quote from Lewis that we delight to praise what we enjoy.

That also emerged in this podcast back in episode number 719 on the question of how do I praise others but avoid flattery? That episode was really interesting too. But how can I find an episode from 2015, Tony, you ask? Easy. Just go to online home and check out the search bar and just type in 719, 719.

Go to DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn. Well for married couples with kids, so much of our time is spent together in the home. And it's one of the places where we most commonly wrong one another. We need to learn when to stop and to repent to one another in the busy home. It's a great question on this theme coming up from a mom that's on Monday when we return.

I'm your host Tony Reinke. Have a great weekend. We'll see you back here on Monday. 719.719.4253 719.719.4253 719.719.4253 719.719.4253 you