The Things of Earth: Treasuring God by Enjoying His Gifts Paperback – December 31, 2014

There are different books and different authors that have a certain type of effect on me. Some primarily increase my knowledge and understanding with clarity and conviction. Some primarily stir my affections. But there are some who not only do both of these things, but they make me want to live. And by that I mean that they make me want to live a certain type of life, to be a certain kind of man, to live life to its fullest in a God-oriented, Christ-exalting way. These books and authors (e.g. C.S. Lewis, Jonathan Edwards, N.D. Wilson, Andrew Peterson, and others) have a certain texture that I have a hard time even putting into words. I just recognize them when I see them. Joe Rigney is in that category. Perhaps partially because he gleans all the right things from many of these authors I listed above! Rigney has wrestled with and then articulated the very thing that many "Christian hedonists" have been struggling with for many years now, but to no avail. And he has done so in an articulate, sometimes humorous, always clear, and thoroughly biblical way. The bottom line: this book has literally been one of those "turning-point" books in my life. That happened in college first with Mere Christianity, then Desiring God, then The End For Which God Created the World, and many others. I can look back and pinpoint these turning-point books and I believe this will be one of them.If you want to think about how to live life in a way that both glorifies God and enjoys His gifts, buy this book. You won't regret it.I'll leave you with a quote:"When we love God supremely and fully, we are able to integrate our joy in God and our joy in his gifts, receiving the gifts as shafts of his glory. Supreme love for God orients our affections and orders our desires and integrates our loves. When we love god supremely, we are free to love creation as creation (and not as God). Because the divine excellence is really present in the gift, we are free to enjoy it for his sake. God's gifts become avenues for enjoying him, beams of glory that we chase back to the source. We don't set God and his gifts in opposition to each other, as though they are rivals. Instead, in the words of Charles Simeon, we 'enjoy God in everything and everything in God.'" (99)

This book has truly been life changing and one of the most practically helpful books I’ve read in a while. There’s many complex beliefs in the faith, including the big idea of this book: is love for the things God has given in made acceptable, may we say even good? Does it compete for my love for God? Rigney answers these questions and many more through scripture in a way that has refreshed my heart and mind to more greatly and wholly love God through not only through faithful Christian disciplines, but also through daily mundane life and all it’s glory!

Here, Joe Rigney works out many if the implications of living for the glory of God. He puts flesh on the catechism's answer regarding the purpose of man: "to worship God and enjoy Him forever"; by examining what it means and how to enjoy God.This is a readable, yet thoroughly theological and biblical book that will shed helpful light on practical Christ-exalting, God-celebrating living... and dying...enjoying...and letting go.I am at once encouraged, freed, and challenged by the author's dividing of the marrow and bone of Christian living. He has helped me to understand that I am not living now for the joys of God awaiting me in the future. Rather, those joys inform and enable my life in the moment by moment experiencing of it every day that I live. God's glory is all around me; in me; with me; for me...every day.I just need to see it, savor it and let it point to God as my ultimate and fully sufficient joy; both now and eternally.I commend this helpful work to you.

Such an incredible book. 4 stars because I would put the Bible as the only book with 5. There was a new sense of freedom, Grace and most importantly, a fresh desire to enjoy God in new ways in my life.Rigney wrote with a true sense of loving God, and loving others, all the while being funny, concise, poignant, and faithful to a very big issue in the American church (false humility, asceticism, self-denial for self-denial's sake). I most appreciated how reading this book made me truly treasure the Trinity in a whole new light, and has taken my walk with God to a more intimate place. Thank you brother!

This book is a wonderful thing of earth! Rigney is a very skillful guide in helping us see how to fully enjoy God in the things he has made and avoid turning those things into God-rivals. This book will expand your understanding of God's purposes in placing you in this material world and it will help you grasp how you can, with the Apostle Paul, really learn "the secret of facing plenty and want, abundance and need" (Philippians 4:12). It will teach you the path of joy in humble, grateful receiving and blessed, extravagant giving. And the book explains why even the loss of all things in death is not the end of joy, but just the beginning of a joy that the things of earth were pointing to all along. The ghosts of John Piper (who is still very much alive, as his Foreword attests), Jonathan Edwards, and C.S. Lewis wonderfully and helpfully haunt these pages. Not many books will shape your life. This one can, if you will listen. Read it. The benefits you receive will multiply over time.

That's it. A very helpful and important book for a doable way to be devoted to God in every day life. If we are to practice devotional life, pursue holiness and give glory to God, it must be in ways that are not monkish. This book really helps us crazy busy, family men and women of 21st century America grow in and preserve our devotion to God. A booklet form should be produced. - Seth Stiles, Associate Pastor of Northshore Bible Church in Louisiana and DMin student at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.

This well written and thoughtful book provides a good balance for those of us who are committed to the wartime attitude promoted by John Piper. The author has been influenced by Piper and is currently a professor at Bethlehem’s seminary so his goal is not to contradict Piper’s position but adjust the perspective. Well worth the read.

Not every chapter is brilliant but allot of them are. Christianity has two doctrines that on the surface seem contradictory. Self denial and gratitude in enjoying the gifts of God. Living in my father's world that is in its totality made good and being an exile and stranger on route to a new celestial city. This tension is especially felt by christian hedonists and people who have been shaped by John Piper's teaching including his teaching on wartime living and not wasting your life. Joe does an excellent job in addressing issues in and improving on his mentors work.

Encouraging, refreshing and Biblically saturated.A lot of times I was left wondering ‘Does the Bible realllyy say this?’ only for him to back it up solidly with scripture. I am refreshed and encouraged to accept love from the Creator, and out of that deep satisfaction, give love.It helps me see the Christian life (and suffering and loss) as an object of sorrowful joy, not striving and burnout.God’s plan is glorious and worth living for.Definitely worth the deep-read.

great book thank you

Fantastic book! Theologically and hedonistically! Rigney's profound understanding and clear language is fantastic for seminary students, pastors, laymen, and even unbelievers. A great book for a gift or just to enjoy reading. I will definitely recommend this book every opportunity I get!

This book is sub titled "Christian Hedonism 2.0." If you have never even heard of Christian Hedonism 1.0 dont worry at all! It was a term coined about 30 years ago by an American pastor called John Piper. Its roots are much older than that, stretching back through the Christian writers CS Lewis and Jonathan Edwards to the bible. Piper defines Christian hedonism as "God is most glorified when we are most satisfied in Him". Edwards says "The enjoyment of God is the only happiness with which our souls can be satisfied. To go to heaven, fully to enjoy God, is infinitely better than the most pleasant accommodations here... fathers and mothers, husbands and wives, children, are but shadows but God is the substance. These are but scattered beams but God is the sun. These are but streams but God is the ocean."Now at this point, I wonder if these thoughts may strike the non Christian reader of this review as very strange. Isn't the Christian God the ultimate kill joy always trying to deny us pleasure? After all didn't HL Mencken infamously define Puritanism (of which Edwards was probably the last representative) as "The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy"? In fact the bible tells us that at Gods right hand are pleasure for evermore. God wants to be the ultimate joy giver, but we are like stupid children always looking in the wrong place. Our problem is that we look for pleasure and joy in the wrong place for example in evil = sin or in the right place (eg family) but in the wrong order, above where it ought to be, which is under God who is the supreme object of joy and pleasure (= idolatry). Most importantly, even if we look in the right place (God) our idea of what God has in store for us is far far too small.This is the kernel of the book. Joe Rigney begins by posing some very good and thought provoking questions. "How can we integrate "spiritual" activities like prayer with "normal activities like eating? As we have only limited love for anything, won't love for the things of this earth crowd out love for God?"To answer this in the meat of the book he deploys some really rich theological explanation, which I thoroughly recommend. However, I have some reservations about the last one thirds which is application and personal narrative.He starts with the Trinity. "we are being invited into the fellowship of the Godhead so that we can have the same union with God that the father and son have with each other. Of course as finite creatures we will never and can never achieve the same relationship....we finite beings are chasing the infinite and therefore we will never catch him. But the increase of our knowledge of God and love for God and joy in God will continue world without end, amen". Amen indeed! He then uses the analogy as God as the author of everything - we are characters in his story, but real characters - and that God is a character in his own story. Most of all this is so when as Rigney writes :"God who though unchanging becomes human and dwells amongst us". Next, he goes on to look at the richness of creation. God is the true materialist. As CS Lewis said "He likes matter. He invented it." So Christians must firmly reject the idea, found of course in the NT in Gnosticism that matter is inherently evil. Nor does love for valid non divine objects in any way "crowd out" our love for God. Rigney gives the amusing illustration of his love for his wife's pumpkin pie. The intense pleasure in this pie doesn't in any way reduce the amount of love available for God. Especially so when we are loving not pumpkin pie but other people. Love for others is not at odds with love for God - in fact love for our neighbours is what love for God looks like when we meet our neighboursThere is lots more really good stuff like this in the main section of the book which i recommend unreservedly. However as noted above I do have some reservations about the last third. the nub of the issues is this. Rigney writes interestingly in places movingly about his life, most of all about his fathers illness, also amusingly about his stupidity with his wife when first married "What do you mean buy some candles - we have got electricity"!But even though he is aware of the danger of extrapolating from his own background, I am slightly cautious about some of his application. He is a self confessed somewhat monastic and self denying theologian living in a (very good) but rarified environment where the dangers of denying the pleasures or creation are perhaps there. But for 99.99% of average Christians this is not the prime danger. Especially I was not convinced by his chapter on culture. Rigney writes "culture making is one of the primary ways that god invites us to participate in his triune fulness". Is that really so? it all depends on what you mean by culture but Rigney defines it pretty broadly. Where in the New Testament do we find that approach to the tremendously rich Greek and Roman culture? yes paul used aspects of it in, for example at Mars Hill in Athens, but the idea that we will experience the Trinity by immersion in todays culture seems to me a little like pumping the sewage into the kitchen in the hope of increasing fertility! I can see in a theological seminary this may be an issue but for 99.99% of us the danger is the act reverse (at least for me anyway) - that we are too conformed to todays culture.So a very good book with excellent questions, highly thought provoking wonderful mind stretching theology but I am not convinced by all its applications which seem to me too derived from and aimed at slightly cloistered American theologians (with profuse apologies to my many theologian friends who are not cloistered, though some are American!)