Seeing & Savoring Jesus Christ - by John Piper

Day 1

"Seeing and savoring Jesus Christ is the most important seeing and savoring you will ever do. Eternity hangs on it. So my aim is that you will see him as solid truth and savor him with great joy." - John Piper

"But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear. For truly, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it." - Matthew 13:16-17 ESV

As I read those the verses in Matthew, my first response was a realization that I am so priviledged to know God, but as I meditate further on the implication, I wonder how, as one so blessed, I can so completely take this privledge for granted. Do I not really get it? Am I so numbed by my surroundings that to see and hear the Holy is common place and pedestrian?

"Savoring Jesus Christ is the response to this second kind of seeing. When you see something as true and beautiful and valuable, you savor it. That is, you teasure it. You cherish and admire and prize it. Spiritual seeing and spiritual savoring are so closely connected that it would be fair to say: If you don't savor Christ, you haven't seen Christ for who he is. If you don't prize him above all things, you haven't apprehended his true worth." - John Piper

Wow... so that explains it. I treat the knowledge of the Holy as normal because I do not value it above all... I treat the Holy One as normal because I do not value Him above all. So... what needs to give? Me, obviously. But what in me? What needs to change in order for me to have a clear, permanent paradign shift? I want to savor Christ with the kind of intense longing that Piper writes with. Instead, I currently enjoy a nice meal and a glass of wine, and savor those things above the Source of that sustenance.

I pray that as I journey with John Piper to See and to Savor Jesus in a new way, that I experience that shift, not just in my thinking, but in my spirit.