Tried With Fire

Congratulations, Michelle!  I emailed you via google regarding your book. Many, many thanks to everyone who entered the giveaway.  Stay tuned for more giveaways in the future.

The main reason that thinking and loving are connected is that we cannot love God without knowing God; and the way we know God is by the Spirit-enabled use of our minds.  So to "love God with all your mind" means engaging all your powers of thought to know God as fully as possible in order to treasure him for all he is worth. God is not honored  by groundless love.  In fact, there is no such thing.  If we do not know anything about God, there is nothing in our mind to awaken love.  If love does not come from knowing God, there is no point calling it love for God . There may be some vague attraction in our heart or some unfocused gratitude in our soul, but if they do not arise from knowing God, they are not love for God.  Think - The Life of the Mind and the Love of God , John Piper, Crossway, page 90.

Having been unexpectedly blessed with 2 copies of Think by John Piper, I will be passing one of these books on to you. To enter the giveaway, leave a comment stating why you would like this book.  (U.S. addresses only due to postage.)  The giveaway will be open until Wednesday, January 12, at which time a providential winner will be randomly picked. Here is an excerpt from the introduction: This book is a plea to embrace serious thinking as a means of loving God and people.  It is a plea to reject either-or- thinking when it comes to head and heart, thinking and feeling, reason and faith, theology and doxology, mental labor and ministry of love.  It is a plea to see thinking as a necessary, God-ordained means of knowing God.  Thinking is one of the important ways that we put the fuel of knowledge on the fires of worship and service to the world. Therefore, the main reason God has given us minds is that we might seek out and find all the reasons that exist...