I was privileged to attend the Together for the Gospel (T4G) 2010 Conference this week in Louisville. The speaker lineup was stellar: Mark Dever, Thabiti Anyabwile, Al Mohler, RC Sproul, John MacArthur, John Piper, Ligon Duncan, Matt Chandler, & CJ Mahaney. I can't write about every little detail but here are some highlights:
-Mark Dever preached a wonderful message & it really made me think about how the local church should operate in a God glorifying way. Christians are regular people but something is noticeably different. Instead of being church goers who act like we are perfect & have it all together we humbly admit our faults & seek forgiveness from each other & Christ. We must break the trends & legalistic stereotypes.
-John Piper's message argued that Paul & Christ preached the gospel of justification by faith & charged us to do the same. His opening text was Luke 18:9-14, which was encouraging because that was the text I preached from in my last sermon. I was particularly moved with his point about the rich young ruler who loved his money too much to follow Christ. What he lacked was that he wouldn't let go of money & grab hold of Christ.... he lacked Christ!
-I was thankful that I got to meet Shai Linne from Lamp Mode Records. He is a very gifted & anointed rapper for the gospel of Christ. I included a pic I took with him above. Shai killed it when he rapped a song on stage about the Trinity, I think alot of people were blown away.
-Perhaps the most moving and emotional part of the conference followed Matt Chandler's testimony of how he has been trying to glorify God as he suffers publicly with brain cancer. John Piper led a prayer for Matt & his wife & others laid hands on brothers in the crowd as we joined prayerfully.
-Ending the conference was CJ Mahaney & the message was a charge for the ordinary pastor to preach the word faithfully. He discussed DA Carson's father, who was an ordinary pastor of a small church. He didn't get much recognition & suffered a lot of pain but he received a great reward when he entered glory. May we all follow faithfully after Christ & look to the reward as a good & faithful unworthy servant.
That's the highlights from T4G 10' & Lord willingly I will attend T4G 12' unless the Lord has greater plans for me & Amanda. I was praying that God would speak to me through His Word, through the preaching of His Word during this conference & I feel like he has cause some unrest in my soul. I will follow that & wrestle with God's call on my life. I desire to be like Christ & fulfill the call he may have for me. What that is I don't know. But I read about a call to ministry from CH Spurgeon and he said if you can prevent going into ministry than avoid it. But if you cannot but preach or die then enter the ministry. So this is me signing off.... faithfully being a witness for Christ but avoiding the ministry unless I must die or enter.
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