Craig T. Owens

In this collection of essays John Piper shares how C.S. Lewis impacted his thinking about God. You can read my book review (and get the link to download the free ebook version of this book) by clicking here.

I could have highlighted and underlined nearly the entire book, but here are some of my favorite quotes—

“I shall not demean my own uniqueness by envy of others. I shall stop boring into myself to discover what psychological or social categories I might belong to. Mostly I shall simply forget about myself and do my work.” —Clyde Kilby

“Although Lewis owned a huge library, he possessed few of his own works. His phenomenal memory recorded almost everything he had read except his own writings—an appealing fault. Often when I quoted lines from his own poems he would ask who the author was. He was a very great scholar, but no expert in the field of C.S. Lewis.” —Walter Hooper

“The work of a charwoman and the work of a poet become spiritual in the same way and on the same condition.” —C.S. Lewis 

“God is not worshipped where He is not treasured and enjoyed. Praise is not an alternative to joy, but the expression of joy. Not to enjoy God is to dishonor Him. To say to Him that something else satisfies you more is the opposite of worship. It is sacrilege.” —John Piper

“How sweet all at once it was for me to be rid of those fruitless joys which I had once feared to lose…! You drove them from me, You who are true, the sovereign joy. You drove them from me and took their place, You who are sweeter than all pleasure, though not to flesh and blood, You who outshine all light, yet are hidden deeper than any secret in our hearts, You who surpass all honor, though not in the eyes of men who see all honor in themselves. … O Lord my God, my Light, my Wealth, and my Salvation.” —Augustine

“Would it not be an encouragement to a subject, to hear his prince say to him, ‘You will honor and please me very much, if you will go to yonder mine of gold, and dig as much gold for yourself as you can carry away’? So, for God to say, ‘Go to the ordinance, get as much grace as you can, dig out as much salvation as you can; and the more happiness you have, the more I shall count Myself glorified.’” —Thomas Watson

“Consider this question: In view of God’s infinite power and wisdom and beauty, what would His love for a human being involve? Or to put it another way: What could God give us to enjoy that would prove Him the most loving? There is only one possible answer: Himself.” —John Piper 

“We praise what we enjoy because the delight is incomplete until it is expressed in praise.” —John Piper

“You cannot hope and also think about hoping at the same moment; for in hope we look to hope’s object and we interrupt this by (so to speak) turning round to look at the hope itself. … The surest means of disarming an anger or a lust is to turn your attention from the girl or the insult and start examining the passion itself.” —C.S. Lewis 

“God is glorified in His people by the way we experience Him, not merely by the way we think about Him. Indeed the devil thinks more true thoughts about God in one day than a saint does in a lifetime, and God is not honored by it. The problem with the devil is not his theology, but his desires. Our chief end is to glorify God, the great Object. We do so most fully when we treasure Him, desire Him, and delight in Him so supremely that we let goods and kindred go and display His love to the poor and the lost.” —John Piper