2018 New Year's Messages From 7 Christian Leaders

By Sheryl Lynn, Christian Post Reporter Monday, January 01, 2018

3. John Piper, founder of desiringgod.org

Pastor John Piper addresses thousands of women at The Gospel Coalition's National Women's Conference in Orlando, Fla., June 23, 2012. | (Photo: The Gospel Coalition via The Christian Post)

Why do we care about daily Bible reading in the new year anyway?

I think the ultimate goal of every Christian should be to glorify God in your life every day — or, to use the words of Philippians 1:20, to magnify Christ in your body, whether you live or whether you die. We exist ultimately on this planet to make God in Christ look magnificent — to make him look precious and valuable, to look like the supreme treasure that he is. That's the goal of life: make God look like a treasure.

Now, how do we go about that since, in our sin, even as believers, there's so much in us that is inclined to think or feel or act in ways that don't make Christ look great? The answer to how we do this is that we have to see the glory of Christ. To see him as glorious, to see the magnificence and the value and the beauty and the greatness and the desirableness of Christ, we have to see him for what he's really like.

You can't savor what you don't see. You can't cherish and desire and love and enjoy and treasure what you're not aware of. If we don't desire and cherish and enjoy and savor and treasure Christ, we will not commend him as magnificent in what we feel and say and do. Christ is most magnified in us when we are most satisfied in him, and we cannot be daily satisfied in the depths of our soul in Christ if we don't see him and savor him. My point is that that can only happen by a steady meditation on the word of God in the Bible.

Original post at desiringgod.org