The Joy Project

Top Highlights

“Sin is not merely wrong doing; sin is essentially wrong adoring. Sin is the fastening of our hearts on any good, treasure, or security in life that replaces the good, treasure, and security of God.” (source)

“John Piper sums up the tragedy like this: ‘Total depravity is not just badness, but blindness to beauty and deadness to joy.’ Our root problem is not that we break commandments; our problem is that we ignore God. Ignoring the beauty of God is the essence of total depravity.” (source)

“Puritan Richard Baxter can say: ‘The chief part of man’s corruption consists in a wrong chief good, a wrong treasure, a wrong security.’” (source)

“Misplaced affection is the root problem behind all conflict. Preoccupied with the streams, we are blind to the fountain of joy. We will not seek the presence of God. Blind to God’s beauty and to his pleasures, we seek to satisfy ourselves with pleasures of the flesh that are too trivial to sustain hungry souls. Feasting only upon creation as the source of joy, our hearts have withered and died. Born with an appetite for the everlasting, we are starved for sustaining joy.” (source)

“What we see around us is what we hunt, and what we hunt fuels the lust for what we long to see. A new technology only breeds new desires for even newer technology. This futile cycle is never broken, because our eyes are never satisfied (Prov. 27:20).” (source)