Desiring God by John Piper

Week 13: Review & Reflection — Looking Back, Moving Forward

Review your notes, journal entries, and marked passages from all chapters of Desiring God.

You have spent weeks sitting with one of the most paradigm-shifting books in contemporary Christian theology — now it is time to take stock of what has actually changed and what you intend to do with it.

Discussion Questions

8 questions

1.Before you read *Desiring God*, how would you have completed this sentence: "The chief end of man is to glorify God..."? And how would you complete it now? What, if anything, has changed — and why?

2.Which chapter or theme was most personally significant to you, and why? Was it worship, love, Scripture, prayer, money, marriage, missions, or suffering — and what was it about that chapter that landed most deeply?

3.Piper's central thesis — "God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him" — has had more than thirty years to work on readers. Has it worked on you? In what specific way do you think about God, yourself, or the Christian life differently than you did at the start of this study?

4.Piper is asking us to change not just our ideas but our affections — not just what we believe but what we want. Has there been any real movement in your affections toward God over the course of this study? Be honest — and if the answer is "not much," what do you think has been in the way?

5.Identify one concrete, observable change you intend to make in response to this book — in your prayer life, your giving, your worship habits, your conversations with non-Christians, or your relationship with Scripture. What is it, and how will you know if it is happening?

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Closing Prayer

Full guide

Lord God, we have spent weeks with this book and its relentless invitation to want you more. We confess that we are not fully there — that our joy in you is still fitful, our delight still fragile, our hearts still prone to find satisfaction in lesser things. But we are more convinced than we were that you are worth wanting above all else. Take what we have learned in these weeks and let it keep working in us — deepening slowly, like water finding its way through rock, until wanting you is the most natural thing about us. You are our exceeding joy. May our lives — in prayer and generosity, in suffering and in love, in worship and in witness — make that increasingly visible to the watching world. For the glory of your name and for our unending, never-disappointed delight in you. Amen.

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