A woman in Sioux Falls, South Dakota writes in to ask, "Pastor John, at times it feels selfish to pray constantly for God to give me joy. How does a Christian hedonist who groans to glorify God use prayer to increase his joy in God without feeling selfish for asking so frequently?" We must define selfishness in a way that is different from the pursuit of joy that the Bible commends.

And here are my distinctions. I'll give you several. Selfishness, which is a bad thing, I'm assuming it's bad. There's a bad definition for selfishness and this is what I mean by the badness of it. It's wanting the exaltation of self without loving the superior exaltation of God. Number two, selfishness is wanting something for yourself at the expense of others.

Number three, selfishness is wanting to be happy without our happiness being in the happiness of others—happiness. And four, selfishness is wanting to be happy without the happiness being a power to make others happy with the very happiness we have in God. So those are my four distinguishings of selfishness from the biblical pursuit of joy.

If our craving for joy, our prayer for joy, turns into one of those, we should feel selfish and we should feel bad and we should repent. But Christian hedonism is specifically designed to prevent all four of those. And here's how. Christian hedonism always stresses that our joy is in God.

We don't merely pursue joy for joy, we pursue joy in God. That's the first thing. We've got to keep that in mind all the time. Christian hedonism then, as we see from texts like Philippians 1:19 to 23, shows that God is magnified by our being satisfied in him. So this joy is always putting the exaltation of God over the exaltation of self because the satisfaction of self in God magnifies God.

So we never ever exalt ourselves above God by being satisfied by God. Christian hedonism teaches that it is more blessed to give than to receive, X 2035, which means that our joy in God increases when it expands to meet the needs of others. Our joy increases when others come to share it.

Joy is not the kind of thing that if others get some, you get less. It's just the opposite. If my joy can expand to include you in it so that yours increases from mine, mine gets bigger. And so there's a built-in protection against exclusivism. Christian joy has an expansive impulse to it because it knows that when others share it, it gets bigger.

And we are, after all, Christian hedonists. We don't exclude others. We want more and more and more people to be included in it, which is the opposite of selfishness. And then Christian hedonism teaches that our happiness in God is the very power to lay down our lives for others.

Jesus, for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross. So Jesus' deep sense of satisfaction in his father and what his father had planned for him on the other side of the resurrection was the very power that enabled him to die for us. And that's exactly the way we should be motivated, as Hebrews 1034 shows.

You had compassion on those in prison. So there you are, loving those in prison at great risk. Why? You joyfully accept the plundering of your property since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one. So it's the confidence, "My happiness is in God. He has taken care of me.

He has infinite pleasures awaiting me at his right hand. He is presently the satisfier of my soul. How could I in any selfish impulse not go to the prison and risk my life to help my brothers and sisters there?" So finding my fullest satisfaction in God frees me from the need to protect myself and impels me to a life of sacrifice.

So to the question then that I think was being asked about prayer, how do we not feel selfish by repeatedly praying for joy in God? I would say keep all of that in mind and then do precisely what the Psalms say the psalmist did. Psalm 90 verse 14, "Praise, satisfy me in the morning with your steadfast love that I may rejoice and be glad all my day." So here's a psalmist praying every day, "Today Lord, satisfy me." And if his joy dribbles away, Psalm 51 verse 12, "Restore to me the joy of your salvation and uphold me with a willing spirit." And the reason those constantly repeating prayers don't turn us into selfish people is because number one, they glorify God.

Number two, they humble us as ever needy of his satisfying presence. Number three, they incline us to increase our joy by expanding it into the lives of others. That's why we want it. And those prayers for joy free us from self-protection so that we could spend our lives in sacrificial love to others.

Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for listening to this podcast. Email your questions to us at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org. At DesiringGod.org you'll find thousands of free books, articles, sermons, and other resources from John Piper. I'm your host Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening.