The Power of Words and the Wonder of God Quotes

“Some of us are afraid of getting too emotional when we sing. But the problem isn’t emotions. It’s emotionalism. Emotionalism pursues feelings as ends in themselves. It’s wanting to feel something with no regard for how that feeling is produced or its ultimate purpose.”
― John Piper, The Power of Words and the Wonder of God

“(2) Singing can help us engage emotionally with words, which means that we need a broader emotional range in the songs we sing, and that singing them should be an emotional event.”
― John Piper, The Power of Words and the Wonder of God

“The question isn’t, Do you have a voice? The question is, Do you have a song? If you’ve turned from your sins and trusted in the finished work of Christ, if you’re forgiven and reconciled to God, then you have a song. It’s a song of the redeemed, of those who have been rescued from the righteous wrath of God through the cross of Jesus Christ and are now called his friends. Once we were not a people, but now we are the people of God, and our singing together, every voice contributing, is one way we express that truth.”
― John Piper, The Power of Words and the Wonder of God

“If music is meant to help us engage emotionally with words, then most churches need a broader emotional range in the songs they sing. We need songs of reverence, awe, repentance, and grief as well as songs of joy, celebration, freedom, and confidence. The holiness of God cannot be adequately expressed in a two-minute up-tempo pop song. The jubilant triumph of Christ’s victory over sin can’t be fully communicated in a slow a cappella hymn. There are varied traditions of song throughout history as well as very different hymn-writers: Puritans, psalm singers, pietists, charismatics, modern worship songs. Why do we need to pit them against one another? As long as the lyrics are edifying and faithful to Scripture, why can’t we draw from each tradition to enable a broader range of emotional responses in corporate worship?”
― John Piper, The Power of Words and the Wonder of God

“So the question we need to ask today is this: if the teaching in our church was limited to the songs that we sing, how well taught would we be? How well would we know God? We should make it our aim not only to preach the whole counsel of God but to sing it, as well.”
― John Piper, The Power of Words and the Wonder of God

“Emotionalism can also assume that heightened feelings are the infallible sign that God is present. They’re not. The emotions that singing is meant to evoke are responses to the truths we’re singing about God—his glory, his greatness, and his goodness.”
― John Piper, The Power of Words and the Wonder of God

“No man can give the impression that he himself is clever and that Christ is mighty to save.” Self-exaltation and Christ-exaltation can’t go together.”
― John Piper, The Power of Words and the Wonder of God

“We foolishly assume that our real struggles with sin are in the areas where we are “weak.” We do not well understand the depth of sin until we realize that it has made its home far more subtly where we are “strong,” and in our gifts rather than in our weaknesses and inadequacies. It is in the very giftedness God has given that sin has been at its most perverse and subtle! But when we are brought to see this, stripped bare of our layers of self-deceit, and led to repentance, then God may make something of us.”
― John Piper, The Power of Words and the Wonder of God

“A fool’s tongue,” Bruce Waltke wryly notes, “is long enough to cut his own throat.”4”
― John Piper, The Power of Words and the Wonder of God

“Sanctification in any area of our lives always expresses this double dimension—a putting off and a putting on, as it were. Speech and silence, appropriately expressed, are together the mark of the mature.3”
― John Piper, The Power of Words and the Wonder of God

“When the Bible uses the term heart, it means the causal core of your personhood. The heart is your directional system. The heart is your steering wheel. Your behavior isn’t caused by the situations and relationships outside of you. This passage teaches that your experiences influence, but do not determine, your behavior. Your behavior is shaped and caused by how your heart reacts to and interacts with the situations and relationships that are outside of you.”
― John Piper, The Power of Words and the Wonder of God

“Bob Kauflin Kauflin argues that Christians tend to fall into one of three categories when it comes to the relationship between music and words: (1) music supersedes the word; (2) music undermines the word; (3) music serves the word. Arguing for this third paradigm, Kauflin suggests three implications: (1) Singing can help us remember words, which means that we should use melodies that are effective, sing words that God wants us to remember, and seek to memorize songs. (2) Singing can help us engage emotionally with words, which means that we need a broader emotional range in the songs we sing, and that singing them should be an emotional event. (3) Singing can help us use words to demonstrate and express our unity, which means singing songs that unite us instead of divide us, recognizing that musical creativity in the church has functional limits and that it is ultimately the gospel, not music, that unites us in Christ.”
― John Piper, The Power of Words and the Wonder of God

“(3) Singing can help us use words to demonstrate and express our unity, which means singing songs that unite us instead of divide us, recognizing that musical creativity in the church has functional limits and that it is ultimately the gospel, not music, that unites us in Christ.”
― John Piper, The Power of Words and the Wonder of God

“(1) Singing can help us remember words, which means that we should use melodies that are effective, sing words that God wants us to remember,”
― John Piper, The Power of Words and the Wonder of God

“Bob Kauflin Kauflin argues that Christians tend to fall into one of three categories when it comes to the relationship between music and words: (1) music supersedes the word; (2) music undermines the word; (3) music serves the word. Arguing for this third paradigm, Kauflin suggests three implications:”
― John Piper, The Power of Words and the Wonder of God