How important is the mind for transforming the heart?

Obedience means Doing what God says and God says delight yourself in God. Right thinking about God exists for the sake of right feeling for God. “Feel Christ,” Piper says that being satisfied in God will not glorify God if our satisfaction in God is not based on right thinking.Right thinking about God exists for the sake of right affections for God
Logic and reasoning exists for the sake love love and joy and delight and affection
Heads exist for hearts. Knowing the truth is the basis for admiring the truth.Both thinking and feeling are important but not equal in ultimacy
The devil gets many things right
He feels no right affectionshe hates the truth that He knows. Knowing is not ultimate. Admiring, being thankful trusting are the goal and ends. Affections based on wrong thinking don't honor God

John Piper gives 10 arguments for the indispensible role of right thinking and right knowing in the life of the Christian:

It is possible to have strong feelings and be lost if the feelings are not based on knowledge (Romans 10:1-2).
God has planned that thinking about the Bible is the means he uses to give understanding (2 Timothy 2:7).
Paul is given as an example of reasoning with the Bible (Acts 17:2-3).
Jesus assumes and requires that we will use logic in understanding both what is natural and what is spiritual (Luke 12:54-57).
Jesus refuses to deal with people who use their reason to conceal truth (Matthew 21:23-27).
Thirteen times in Paul’s letters, he asks the question, “Do you not know?” Paul assumes that if his readers knew something, they would see things differently, feel differently, and act differently.
The Bible tells us that Christ has given pastors and teachers to the church and tells us that they should be apt to teach—because God intends that the Bible be explained to ordinary folks who don’t have the time or ability to go as deep as God wants them to go. Christ would not have given teachers to the church if he thought they were not needed.
The Bible declares that we should proclaim the whole council of God (Acts 20:27). That implies that there is a coherent unified whole, a body of doctrine, that should be given to the church. It is not easy to find this whole council in a book with 1,500 pages! It’s mainly mental labor. Finding the unified biblical theology that the people need to know takes hard thinking.
The Bible is a book, which means that it must be read.
An example of how thinking and valuing and acting relate to each other is Matthew 7:7-12.
On the final point, John Piper said that thinking is necessary to get meaning from a text and to then present it to others. In particular he pointed to the first word in verse 12.

I read Matthew 7:12 for 25 years before I asked how it relates to the previous verse. Why does verse 12 begin with "so"? Because confidence that God will meet our needs is what frees us to take radical risks in loving other people. "Do unto others . . ." because you know God is going to answer your prayers and take care of you.

God is most glorified in you when you are most satisfied in him. But that satisfaction in God does not glorify him unless it is based on right thinking and right knowing. God is all-satisfying because he’s a Father who gives us everything we truly need. And that kind of deep unshakeable satisfaction in our Father causes us to value things differently than the world. Therefore, we will love our neighbors. Right thinking with right feeling changes our behavior.

How should we preach Christ?

John Piper’s final message in Bonn, titled “Preach Christ,” called pastors to…

Preach the truth that God’s highest goal in history is the display of his own glory.
Preach that it is loving for God to do what he has to do to open our eyes to see his glory.
Preach the cross from its eternal foundation in the past to its eternal consummation in the future.
Preach conversion as the Holy Spirit's act of opening blind eyes to see the glory of Christ in the gospel (2 Cor. 4:4–6).
Preach sanctification as the effect of seeing the glory of Christ (2 Cor. 3:18).
John Piper said that 1 Corinthians 15:3 may be the clearest definition of the gospel in the Bible. It shows us 6 aspects of the gospel:

The cross was planned (“in accordance with the Scriptures”).
The gospel is a historical event (“Christ died”).
The death of Christ achieved something (“for our sins”).
That achievement is freely offered to everyone for faith alone. If that achievement were offered on the basis of my performance in any measure, there would be no gospel.
When I do believe in Jesus, the achievement is applied to me.
The end of the gospel is to see and enjoy the glory of God. God is our highest treasure; we are reconciled and forgiven and justified and given eternal life to enjoy God (1 Peter 3:18).
When we are fully and finally purchased and converted and sanctified in this way, then we will be fully satisfied in God and God will be fully glorified in us. And that’s why the universe was created and exists.

Is anti-intellectualism an enemy of preaching that really transforms lives?

Dr James Boys said “Whatever a church uses to get them in, it has to keep using the keep them in.”

We all want people to be saved, right? Well what do we need to tell them?

Ultimately, if we want them to stay in because they know and love Jesus. Well we then have to begin with what it means to know and love Jesus. J Greshamachen in his book Christianity and liberalism in the 1920s said:

How can we make church "new comer" friendly?

How can we help make church welcoming for the new comer? I've been thinking about how to lead church. I generally begin with a famous challenging quote by a Christian related to the talk and also talking about my weekend, however I know I have a long way to go and can use all the help I can get. I was at a conference recently and they talked about the massive increase in church growth we would see if all those who visited our churches were well received, looked after, welcomed and became part of the congregation.

Finding happiness

Everyone is searching for happiness, for a sense of joy and satisfaction. We search for it in luxury, pleasure, leisure, travel, experience, success, security, popularity, partying, alcohol, sex and materialism. In 1941 C.S. Lewis preached the following words, "If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kent and the Stoics and is not part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased."