Bookstores and Future Grace

I love bookstores. There is just something about standing in racks upon racks of books that motivates me. Each book on a shelf has a story behind it. There is the author's life experiences and education. There is the publisher's willingness to take a risk. There is the marketing team's creativity in artwork and advertising.

It amazes me how the same book can bring about such different responses in readers.

I spent some time in a used book store yesterday with my three boys. While there, I went to the religion section. I was perusing the shelves when I came upon a book by John Piper that I was previously unfamiliar with. It's called Future Grace and it was published by Multnomah in 1995. I just looked on Amazon, and it was republished in 2005, with a new cover.

I haven't read the book yet. I bought it, because on pages 9-10 you'll find this paragraph:

On the other side of the coin, the aim of this book is to emancipate human hearts from servitude to the fleeting pleasures of sin. Sin is what you do when your heart is not satisfied with God. No one sins out of duty. We sin because it holds some promise of happiness. That promise enslaves us until we believe that God is more to be desired than life itself (Psalm 63:3). Which means that the power of sin's promise is broken by the power of God's. All that God promises to be for us in Jesus stands over against what sin promises to be for us without him. This great prospect of the glory of God is what I call future grace. Being satisfied with that is what I call faith. And therefore the life I write about in this book is called Living by Faith in Future Grace.

That's pretty profound. I was just having lunch with a student on Monday, talking about why so many of his friends choose sin. I wish I read this quote about sin earlier.

If you've read this book, I'd love to hear what it meant to you. I'm looking forward to taking the journey.