As we enjoy our gifts from God, how do we guard against valuing the gifts above the giver? John Piper examines “The Line Between God-Cherishing Gratitude and Gift-Cherishing Idolatry.”

How do all the gifts that flow to us from the gospel relate to God as the ultimate and all important gift of the gospel? The challenge . . . is to walk a fine line between belittling the gifts of God and making the gifts of God into god. It’s the line between God-cherishing gratitude and gift-cherishing idolatry. The truth I will try to unfold is that all the gifts of God are given for the sake of revealing more of God’s glory, so that the proper use of them is to rest our affections not on them but through them on God alone.
   What I mean by resting our affections is that the desires of our hearts find their end point—their goal, their resting place—only in God, even though, as it were, they ride up to God on a thousand gifts. Augustine said, “thou hast made us for thyself and our heart is restless until it repose in thee.” This restlessness is a good thing when we find ourselves delighting in one of God’s gifts. Gifts of God should be enjoyed, whether it be the gift of salvation (1 Pet. 1:4–5) or food (1 Tim. 4:3; 6–7). But if our affections rest there, we become idolaters. So the aim of this chapter and the next is to show from scripture how blood-bought gifts—one could say, gifts of the gospel—point away from themselves to the one great gift of the gospel, God himself.

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Consider first God’s manifold gifts that come to us in the accomplishment of our salvation. How shall we rejoice in them? Predestination is one of the first gifts of the gospel, even though it preceded the death of Christ in eternity. The spotless lamb, Jesus Christ, who was slain for our sins, was foreknown before the foundation of the world (1 Pet. 1:20). Because of his, God gave us grace before the ages began (2 Tim. 1:9). Therefore, Paul says, “God predestined us for adoption through Jesus Christ” (Eph. 1:5) This predestination was God’s purpose to adopt us and make us holy and blameless before him in love.
   How then shall we rejoice in this amazing blood-bought gift of predestination? Paul gives the answer in Ephesians 1:6. “He predestined us . . . to the praise of the glory of his grace” (NASB). God’s aim in our predestination is that we admire and make much of the glory of his grace. In other words, the aim of predestining us is that grace would be put on display as glorious, and that we would see it and savor it and sing its praises. The glory of grace is the glory of God acting graciously. Therefore, the aim of predestination is that we savor God in his gracious saving action of predestination. The goal of predestination, and of the gospel acts that purchased it, is that we would be glad in praising the grace of God.

—John Piper, God Is the Gospel (Crossway, 2005), 117–118.