I am overjoyed that The Pleasures of God is here in a new edition. You can order the book, DVD and study guide, all for $10 total.
Here’s how I would describe it. First, compare it with its older cousin, Desiring God.
Desiring God is about our glad experience of God. The Pleasures of God is about God’s glad experience of God. Desiring God argues that the essence of man’s virtue and worship consists in our delight in God. The Pleasures of God argues that the essence of God’s virtue and worship consists in his delight in God. Yes, God worships: He infinitely prizes and delights in the single Object of infinite worth—God. He is not an idolater in his delights.
The Pleasures of God is a book about the nature and character of God. The premise is that the excellence of a soul is measured by the object of its delight. If we delight in wicked things, we are wicked.
So I decided to explore if the Bible showed this to be true of God. Does what God delights in, show the excellence of his soul? The answer is yes. And The Pleasures of God is a tour of those discoveries.
What the church and the world need today—now as much as always—is to know and love God—the great, glorious, sovereign, happy God of the Bible. Few people think of God as supremely happy. And even fewer think that the objects of his happiness are one of the clearest displays of his magnificence.
My hope and prayer with this book is that more and more people would meditate with me on the pleasures of God; and that, in doing so, we would focus our attention on his glory. In this way our souls would be increasingly satisfied with God and changed into his likeness.
Here are the divine delights we focus on.
- The Pleasure of God in His Son
- The Pleasure of God in All He Does
- The Pleasure of God in His Creation
- The Pleasure of God in His Fame
- The Pleasure of God in Election
- The Pleasure of God in Bruising the Son
- The Pleasure of God in Doing Good to All Who Hope in Him
- The Pleasure of God in the Prayers of the Upright
- The Pleasure of God in Personal Obedience and Public Justice
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