Most people, when they ponder what it means to be loved by God, do not think God-centred thoughts. They think of the things that God does for us but which, in their minds, don't have God as the satisfying centre.

But it wouldn't be loving of God to give us everything but himself - and so his love doesn't do that. It gives us himself for our enjoyment, and it gives us other things as means of knowing him better and loving him more.

In John Piper's reflective, paradigm-challenging book, he drives home the point that what is most loving about God is not his making much of us, but his enabling us, at great cost to himself, to enjoy making much of him forever.