What ideas have strongly influenced John Piper?
What I have learned from about twenty-years of serious reading is this. It is sentences that change my life, not books. What changes my life is some new glimpse of truth, some powerful challenge, some resolution to a long-standing dilemma, and these usually come concentrated in a sentence or two. I do not remember 99% of what I read, but if the one percent of each book or article I do remember is a life-changing insight, then I don’t begrudge the 99%. And that life-changing insight usually comes in a moment, a moment whose value is all out of proportion to its little size. That’s why I call it an “immeasurable moment.” Here are some of the examples of the 1% that have gripped me and changed me. From Jonathan Edwards, his 6th life resolution written in college: “Resolved: To live with all my might while I do live.” From his book the Religious Affections: “True Religion, in great part, consists in holy affections.” From St. Paul a sentence hit me when I was about twenty-two that has shap
