In finishing Piper’s book “Think” several weeks ago I wanted to share some brief thoughts about the book.  I haven’t read Piper in a while and to be quite honest, he’s not the typical Christian author; he writes with a level of insight and wisdom that necessitated me to many times go back and reread what he said so I could understand more clearly what I believed he was saying.  What’s ironic is the previous sentence is one such reason Piper writes his book: he is making a plea for Christian people to use the gift of the mind that God gave them to “embrace serious thinking as a means of serious knowing and love God and people” (Piper, pp. 179).

Instead of writing a summary-post on the book, which would require more thinking (hmm?), I’m simply going to share Piper’s concluding thoughts that I found helpful, encouraging and challenging.  Here they are:

He starts with “a plea to those who don’t love to think.”

• Be thankful for thinkers – first, be humbly thankful for the countless benefits you enjoy both spiritually and naturally from those who have devoted their lives to the rigorous use of the mind.
• Respect those who serve you with thinking – second, respect those who by inclination and calling devote time and effort to thinking for the sake of understanding the Bible and the world we live in.
• Pray for the vulnerable thinkers – third, pray earnestly for the teachers and preachers and scholars in the churches and seminaries and colleges.
• Avoid wrongheaded thinking – fourth, even thou you don’t often think about the way you think, try to avoid the worst mental mistakes in dealing with the Bible and those who teach it.
• Read your Bible with joy – fifth, even though you are not self-conscious of your thought processes and see yourself as just an ordinary reader of the Bible, don’t let anything I (Piper) say keep you from doing that more and more.

He ends with “a plea to those who love to think.”

• Think consciously for the glory of Christ – first, make all your thinking a partner in God’s ultimate purpose to magnify the supreme worth of his glory – the glory of Christ.
• Become like little children – second, humble yourself under the mighty hand of God.
• Enjoy the Word of God like gold and honey – third, delight yourself in the Word of God and day and night.
• Think for the sake of love – fourth, make all your thinking an act of love for people.

I’m thankful I have men and women around me who love to think and who intentionally and unintentionally spur me on to think more seriously, intimately and hopefully, biblically about the myriad of things that I need to be thinking about.