The Satisfied Soul: Showing the Supremacy of God in All of Life by John Piper is a clarion call to put God first in all areas of your life. This book is comprised of 120 random meditations revealing the supremacy of God in everyday life. Piper encourages the reader,

May these meditations become in your life the living embodiment of God’s Word and penetrate to the deep places of your soul. God has a good work to do there.

His goal is to bring encouragement to the reader’s soul in our time of moral laxity and spiritual relativism. They provide encouragement and challenge us to place God first in all areas of our lives. I enjoy Piper’s writings and appreciate His emphasis on having a God centered life. I would have preferred a deeper interaction with the Bible in some of these meditations rather than a restatement of a commentaries perspective. For example, on his exposition of Hebrews 4:12, he concludes, “So the ‘word of God’ in Hebrews 4:12 probably refers to the truth of God revealed in Scripture that humans speak to each other with reliance of God’s help to understand it and apply it” (p. 287). This may be a common view; however, a deeper inspection of the immediate context offers another explanation, “And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do” (Hebrews 4:13). The personal pronouns “His” and “Him” indicate the author of Hebrews is referring to a person not the Bible.

The Greek word for “word” that is used in this passage is logos which is used to describe Jesus by the Apostle John, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God’ (John 1:1). The context in Hebrews then points to Jesus, “Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession” (Hebrews 4:14).

Another area that surprised me was his description of the 10/40 window. Piper is incorrect when he writes, “The 10/40 Window extends from West Africa to East Asia, and from ten degrees north to forty degrees south of the equator” (p. 296). The window he describes would exclude the middle east, India, and China. The proper location of the 10/40 window as used by missiologists to describe unreached people groups is ten degrees north latitude to 40 degrees north latitude, it is not south of the equator.

I especially appreciated his meditation entitled, “A Prayer for Our Church” (p. 394). Overall, this is an inspirational book and will especially appeal to those who prefer a reformed theological perspective. (I received this book for free from WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group for this review).

Associate Pastor – Discipleship.  The Chu,rch at LifePark

Professor of Discipleship, Columbia International University

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