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Enjoying God Blog

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Jonathan Edwards once described God as “an infinite fountain of divine glory and sweetness.” In other words, God endlessly overflows in goodness and grace toward us, bringing matchless and never-ceasing satisfaction to our souls. Thus he can never be replenished by his creatures. He stands in need of nothing. We supply no lack in God.

So, how do we worship him? How do we honor him? With what attitude and intent should we approach him? In what way do we “give” glory to God without belittling him as needy and dependent on us? John Piper tells us:

"God has no needs that I [or anyone else] could ever be required to satisfy. God has no deficiencies that I might be required to supply. He is complete in himself. He is overflowing with happiness in the fellowship of the Trinity. The upshot of this is that God is a mountain spring, not a watering trough. A mountain spring is self-replenishing. It constantly overflows and supplies others. But a watering trough needs to be filled with a pump or bucket brigade. So if you want to glorify the worth of a watering trough you work hard to keep it full and useful. But if you want to glorify the worth of a spring you do it by getting down on your hands and knees and drinking to your heart's satisfaction, until you have the refreshment and strength to go back down in the valley and tell people what you've found. You do not glorify a mountain spring by dutifully hauling water up the path from the river below and dumping it in the spring. What we have seen is that God is like a mountain spring, not a watering trough. And since that is the way God is, we are not surprised to learn from Scripture – and our faith is strengthened to hold fast – that the way to please God is to come to him to get and not to give, to drink and not to water. He is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.

My hope as a desperate sinner, who lives in a Death Valley desert of unrighteousness, hangs on this biblical truth: that God is the kind of God who will be pleased with the one thing I have to offer – my thirst. That is why the sovereign freedom and self-sufficiency of God are so precious to me: they are the foundation of my hope that God is delighted not by the resourcefulness of bucket brigades, but by the bending down of broken sinners to drink at the fountain of grace. . . .

In other words, this unspeakably good news for helpless sinners – that God delights not when we offer him our strength but when we wait for his – this good news that I need to hear so badly again and again, is based firmly on a vision of God as sovereign, self-sufficient and free” (The Pleasures of God, 215-16).

1 Comment

Perfect. I needed to once again hear this. Thank you for sharing.

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