“God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.”
That sentence either excites you or confuses you. If it confuses you, you need this book. If it excites you, you probably already read it — and you should read it again.
John Piper wrote Desiring God in 1986 and detonated a theological revolution. Not because he said anything new. Because he said something very old in a way that made the church realize it had been reading the Bible with half its brain turned off.
What It’s About
Piper’s thesis is provocatively simple: the pursuit of joy in God is not optional. It is the very heart of what it means to glorify Him.
He calls this “Christian Hedonism” — a phrase designed to provoke. It provokes because we’ve been trained to think that duty and delight are opposites. That the most pious thing you can do is obey God even though it brings you no pleasure. That self-denial means joylessness. That the purest worship is the worship that costs you everything and gives you nothing.
Piper says that’s not piety. It’s Stoicism wearing a cross.
The argument unfolds across ten chapters. Piper starts with the philosophical foundation — drawing heavily on Jonathan Edwards’ The End for Which God Created the World and Blaise Pascal’s Pensees — then applies Christian Hedonism to every major arena of the Christian life: worship, Scripture, prayer, money, marriage, missions, and suffering.
The thesis that holds the whole book together: You cannot glorify God by being bored with Him. Duty without delight doesn’t honor God — it insults Him. A husband who says, “I take my wife out to dinner every week because it’s my duty” is not honoring his wife. He’s damning her with obligation. The same is true of God. He doesn’t want your begrudging obedience. He wants your joy. And your joy in Him is the very thing that displays His worth to the world.
What It Gets Right
The integration of emotion and theology. For too long, Reformed theology has been caricatured as cold intellectualism — all head, no heart. Piper took the theology of Edwards, Owen, and the Puritans and recovered its original temperature. The Puritans were on fire. Edwards preached with tears. Owen wrote about communion with God in language that sounds like a love letter. Piper brought that heat back into a tradition that had frozen over in the 20th century.
The chapter on suffering. Chapter 10 — “Suffering: The Sacrifice of Christian Hedonism” — is the best chapter in the book. Piper argues that suffering is the ultimate test of Christian Hedonism: can you be satisfied in God when everything else has been taken away? He draws on the lives of missionaries, martyrs, and ordinary believers who found joy in loss — not because they were masochists, but because they had tasted something better than what was taken from them. This chapter alone is worth the price of the book.
The missionary implication. Piper’s famous line — “Missions exists because worship doesn’t” — comes from this book, and it reframes the entire enterprise of global mission. You don’t go to the nations out of guilt or obligation. You go because you’ve found something so valuable that you can’t keep it to yourself. The joy overflows. The mission is the overflow. This has shaped an entire generation of missionaries, and the logic is airtight.
Where It Falls Short
The term “Christian Hedonism” is a stumbling block, and Piper knows it. He chose it deliberately to provoke, and he’s defended the choice for forty years. But there’s a cost. Some readers will never get past the title. Some pastors will never recommend it because they can’t explain the phrase without a twenty-minute qualifier. The substance of the book is not hedonism in any secular sense — but the branding creates a barrier that the content then has to overcome. Edwards made the same argument without the provocative label. Sometimes clarity is more important than provocation.
Piper’s writing style is intense — relentlessly so. Every paragraph pushes toward the same point with escalating urgency. For some readers, this is electrifying. For others, it’s exhausting. The book could be 30% shorter without losing substance. Several chapters repeat the core thesis in new contexts, which is pedagogically useful but can feel redundant on a straight-through read.
The philosophical sections in the early chapters — particularly the engagement with Edwards’ The End for Which God Created the World — are denser than the rest of the book and may lose readers who came for the practical application. If you stall in chapters 1-2, skip to chapter 4 and come back.
Who Should Read This
| Reader | Should Read? | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Believer who sees duty and joy as opposites | Yes — this book is for you | It will rewire how you think about obedience, worship, and God Himself |
| New believer (0-2 years) | Yes | Start with chapters 4-6, then go back to the beginning |
| Someone in a season of spiritual dryness | Yes, carefully | This book diagnoses the problem and prescribes the cure — but it might sting first |
| Pastor preparing a series on joy or worship | Absolutely | Decades of sermon material in here |
| Reformed believer who finds doctrine dry | Essential | Piper is the antidote to cold orthodoxy |
| Someone suffering deeply | Chapter 10 first | The rest can wait; the suffering chapter speaks directly to your moment |
The Data Card
**BOOK DATA**
– **Title:** Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist (Revised and Expanded)
– **Author:** John Piper (b. 1946)
– **Original Publication:** 1986
– **Recommended Edition:** Multnomah, 2011 (revised and expanded, 25th anniversary)
– **Pages:** 416 (revised edition)
– **Formats:** Paperback (~$14), Kindle (~$11), Audiobook (Audible), Free PDF at desiringGod.org
**READING DATA**
– **Difficulty:** 2/5 — Accessible with occasional philosophical depth
– **Est. Reading Time:** 10-14 hours
– **Suggested Pace:** One chapter per week for 10 weeks (chapters are substantial)
– **Prerequisites:** None formally, but familiarity with basic Christian doctrine helps
– **Re-read Value:** Very High — Piper himself says this book was meant to be read more than once
**THEOLOGICAL CONTEXT**
– **Tradition:** Reformed Baptist (Piper is a confessional Baptist and five-point Calvinist)
– **Key Topics:** Joy in God, Christian Hedonism, worship, prayer, money, missions, suffering, the glory of God, pursuit of happiness
– **Theological Stance:** Edwardsean Reformed theology. The intellectual foundation is Jonathan Edwards’ *The End for Which God Created the World*.
**COMPARABLE TITLES**
– **Instead of:** *The Pursuit of God* by A.W. Tozer (shorter, more devotional, less theologically rigorous — Tozer asks the same question Piper does, but Piper answers it more completely)
– **After this:** *God Is the Gospel* by John Piper (takes the core thesis further — the ultimate gift of the gospel is God Himself)
– **Pairs with:** *The Holiness of God* by R.C. Sproul (Sproul gives you God’s majesty; Piper gives you joy in that majesty — together they’re the full picture)
– **Goes deeper:** *The End for Which God Created the World* by Jonathan Edwards (the original philosophical argument behind Christian Hedonism)
The Bottom Line
Desiring God is not a perfect book. It’s too long, the title is a liability, and the early chapters are denser than they need to be. But at its core, this book carries a truth that has transformed millions of lives: your happiness and God’s glory are not in competition. They never were. The happiest you will ever be is when God is the biggest thing in your field of vision. And the most glorifying thing you can do for God is to find your deepest satisfaction in Him.
If your Christianity feels like duty without delight — if you obey God but you don’t enjoy Him — this book will either set you free or make you very uncomfortable. Probably both.
Piper didn’t invent this idea. Edwards had it. Pascal had it. Augustine had it. The Psalms are full of it. But Piper packaged it for a generation that needed to hear that joy is not a luxury in the Christian life. It’s the engine.
Rating: 4/5
