John Piper – Semper Reformanda

XLIX

If you have lingering sin in your life, or if you keep neglecting some good deed just because you have been waiting around to be saved without a fight, you are compounding your disobedience. God will never appear with power in your will in any other way than through your exercise of that will; that is, through your good resolves — your good intentions and plans and purposes.

So, people who believe in the sovereignty of God must not fear to engage their wills in the struggle for holiness.

John Piper, Good Works through Good Resolve

XLVI

There are many people who water down what saving faith is by making it a mere decision with no change of what one desires and seeks. But the point of this text in the great faith chapter in the Bible — Hebrews 11 — is that living and dying by faith means having new desires and seeking new satisfactions.

John Piper, Saving Faith Isn’t Easily Satisfied

XLIV

And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Matthew 6:7 (ESV)

“… instead of seeking to impress or play probability games with the divine ear, we can pray simple, childlike, and even concise prayers to our Father… knowing that we have his ear through Jesus Christ. We ask him for the needs we already know he knows about. He is a Father, bidding his sons and daughters come close to tell him all the requests of their hearts.”

Greg Morse, How not to pray