By John Piper, DesiringGod.com
There are serious theological reasons why we love hyphenated phrases that turn verbs and nouns into adjectives. God-centered. Christ-exalting. Spirit-dependent. Bible-saturated. Gospel-rooted. Truth-tethered. Soul-satisfying. Sin-killing. Justice-advancing. Satan-defeating. Self-sacrificing. Risk-taking. Mission-pursuing. And more. One of those reasons is that making a verb into an adjective shows that it modifies a hundred things you do rather than simply being one of those things. I’ll come back to this.
My aim here is to encourage you to make “Christ-exalting” the featured adjective in your prayers throughout 2015. Let me explain what I mean. Then I’ll give you three reasons why I think this would be a great New Year’s resolution.
Why Christ-Exalting?
When we pray, we might say, “Lord, grant that I would exalt Christ today.” Or we might say: “Father, help me make much of Jesus today. Help me to show how great he is.” Or: “Father, cause me to glorify your Son today. Give me a heart to magnify him.”
Those would be wonderful prayers. I have prayed them hundreds of times.
But what happens when we take this activity, “Grant that I would exalt Christ today,” and turn it into an adjective like “Christ-exalting”?