[ my chains are gone, i've been set free ]

John Piper has written this important book entitled Don't Waste Your Life, published a few years ago by Crossway Books.

Sharon and Susan talked a lot about John Piper when we were freshmen at Muskingum. In fact, a few books of his had been pretty monumental in Sharon's life, especially when she studied abroad in Argentina.

I am beginning to see why Sharon and Susan respect Piper's books.

Piper's passion for seeing hearts turned toward whole-life display and worship of God in all His glory is really cool. Check this out:

An American Tragedy: How Not to Finish Your One Life

I will tell you what a tragedy is. I will show you how to waste your life. Consider a story from the February 1998 edition of Reader's Digest, which tells about a couple who "took early retirement from their jobs in the Northeast five years ago when he was 59 and she was 51. Now they live in Punta Gorda, Florida, where they cruise on their 30 foot trawler, play softball and collect shells." At first, when I read it I thought it might be a joke. A spoof on the American Dream. But it wasn't. Tragically, this was the dream: Come to the end of your life -- your one and only precious, God-given life -- and let the last great work of your life, before you give an account to your creator, be this: playing softball and collecting shells. Picture them before Christ at the great day of judgment: "Look, Lord. See my shells." That is a tragedy. And people today are spending billions of dollars to persuade you to embrace that tragic dream. Over against that, I put my protest: Don't buy it. Don't waste your life. (pp. 45-6)

Piper has a knack for honesty, to be sure.

Does that make you feel uneasy at all? I'm only 20, but it makes my stomach turn a bit.

Joe has written a song about chasing after God rather than this ideal 'American Dream,' whatever that may look like, and lately, a few of us at school have been talking and thinking seriously about what it means to live radically for Christ in our lifetime.

All of it may seem idealistic now, being in our early 20's with no bills or kids to take care of or careers on our plates, but I'm beginning to realize more and more that maybe that doesn't matter; that perhaps our lack of experience in the 'real world' is actually a beautiful thing, and that young age doesn't always equal ignorance.

I get this feeling sometimes that I have a lot of stuff -- material and otherwise -- to share, and if it's all God's anyway, my life, especially after college, has to -- just has to -- look different. Really different.

You know, the Cross-centered, Christ-exalting life may be a lot tougher and painful than we have been brought up to believe, if indeed we were nailed to the Cross with our Savior and are commissioned now to be ambassadors for Jesus.

But yet...God has redeemed us for His ultimate glory, and we can boast in the Cross as the "blazing center of the glory of God."

By Your wounds we are healed
By Your wounds we are saved
Mighty is the power of the Cross

The Cross changes everything.

It transforms my skewed perception of my desires and needs; it crashes the tower I've constructed for myself; it points me directly toward God, who in His glory has rescued us from our foggy visibility -- straight into reality-sight, found only in the real, living God.

Let's give Him our all.