A few conferences have been happening recently, check out the audio…

Dwell New York -   Driscoll, Keller, Mahaney, Stetzer

New Attitude 2008 - Harris, Piper, Dever, Mohler, Mahaney

Basics 2008 -   Begg, Bridges, Getty, Bauchman, Challies

Together 4 the Gospel -   Piper, Duncan, MacArthur, Dever, Mohler, Anyabwile, Sproul, Mahaney

…and next week is Resolved 2008 with Piper, MacArthur, Mahaney and others!

Good news that there will be a New Word Alive in 2009, at sunny Prestatyn… but what will it be like? Well, in light of this, this, and this, I thought I would share my wishlist for Word Alive 2009…

Morning Bible Readings - Alec Motyer on Isaiah… loved him last year at Keswick on Exodus, heard he has a fine commentary on Isaiah, would love to find out what that’s all about…

Leadership seminar - Mark Dever… you could call it 9 Marks of a Healthy Church or something…

Apologetics seminar - Tim Keller… It would be cool to hear him give some practical ways to engage with culture, friends, family, colleagues in light of ‘Reason for God’

Evening Celebrations 1 & 2 - Mark Driscoll on Radical Reformission… would love to hear what he has to say about students and young people being missionaries in their culture in the UK

Evening Celebrations 3 & 4 - CJ Mahaney on Humble Orthodoxy… hadn’t really listened or read anything by CJ up until a few months ago… love it now

…and presumably Adrian Warnock will lead the Band of Bloggers seminar…?

Oh, and Team Strike Force leading the music!!

This is all a little optimistic, but just getting one of these guys would be a scoop! Look forward to hearing the details when they happen…

The 2008 Together for the Gospel conference is just coming to a close in Louisville, Kentucky. There doesn’t seem to be a particular theme this year, except just the gospel I guess… Ligon Duncan, Thabiti Anyabwile, John MacArthur, Mark Dever, RC Sproul, Albert Mohler, John Piper and CJ Mahaney… pretty impressive line up!

You can download the talks here, along with those from T4G 2006.

For some blog reports… Bish managed to get a free trip to go, and Challies is there too.

If you don’t know what Together 4 the Gospel is then have a look at this…

As these shouts and screams from the mob grow in volume, what’s it like for our Lord to look out upon these people? Even if you can’t recognize yourself among the angry face, or distinguish your own strident voice… He can. And in response to those sinful shouts and curses from you and me, Jesus yields to the sentence of death……
When we begin to grasp that we joined that mockery - that we are to blame for the Saviour’s death - we start to understand the seriousness of our sin.
But convicting you of sin is not my ultimate purpose here; rather, I want to convince you of grace. For when you’re deeply aware of your sin, and of what an affront it is to God’s holiness, and of how impossible it is for Him to respond with anything other than furious wrath - you can only be overwhelmed with how amazing grace is.

Only those who are truly aware of their sin can truly cherish grace.

CJ Mahaney, Living the Cross Centered Life (page 88)

With Easter approaching I wanted to read a book on the cross, but with the pressures of work I didn’t have time to pick up a ‘big one’, but this little CJ Mahaney book packs a big punch, it’s short but meaty.

CJ starts off with some basic foundational points; Paul describes the Gospel as of “first importance” (1 Cor 15), it should be the main thing in our lives and we need to keep it the main thing. But he points out there’s 3 other beliefs that draw us away from the Gospel:

1. Subjectivism - basing our view of God on our changing feelings and emotions
2. Legalism - basing our view of God on our own performance
3. Condemnation - being more focused on our sin than on God’s grace

The book goes on to deconstruct these errors and to put our focus back on God’s grace given to us at the cross. One of the things I love about this book is that CJ is so good at taking complex theological words and the different facets of the cross making them easy to understand, and thoroughly practical: love, justice, penal substitution, justification, redemption, sacrifice, wrath, ransom, expiation, judgement, imputed righteousness, suffering… all this great doctrine is interwoven into simple exultation of the cross, and the call to live life with the cross at the centre of all things.

The book is worth reading if only for chapter six and seven; they are powerful and emotive, bringing the truth of the cross to the reader with great clarity and conviction. Chapter six explains what’s going on in Gethsemane, Jesus is taking the cup of God’s wrath, his soul is “sorrowful”, he falls down and prays that God would take the cup away… CJ shows the pain caused, the anguish and agony when God’s wrath is placed upon someone, the spiritual separation from God is great, Jesus feels this pain. But, this is my cup that Jesus takes, “He took the cup that was reserved for me”, the sorrow that we see in Jesus in the garden should be what we experience now.

Chapter seven is called “Your Face in the Crowd”, who do we identify most with in the crucifiction accounts; the disciples, Pilate, Judas, the women, the crowd? Martin Povey spoke at BH last night and made it clear why we can all identify with Judas, we’ve all betrayed our saviour. The lyrics to a Mars Hill song, can’t remember the song or the exact words, but it was along the lines of “Judas sold you for 30 pieces, I’d have done it for less.” CJ puts us in the crowd above other places, we’re the ones calling for Jesus to be crucified, it’s our sin that sent him there!

You can get a book called “The Cross Centred Life” for the bargain price of £6 from the Good Book Company, that’s £4.50 with a UCCF Student Card… although it is a reduced version, my book is called “Living the Cross Centered Life” and has a white cover, the book on GBC is called “The Cross Centered Life” and has an orange cover… according to Matthew, my one is two books brought together- “The Cross Centered Life” and “Christ our mediator”… anyway, whichever book you find, buy it and read it! Will have to read Humility soon, another highly rated book by CJ.

How do you spell Centered? I would have spelt it “Centred”… am I being stupid, or is it one of those silly American spelling mistakes?

Next week is the Resurgence conference, Text and Context - Driscoll, Piper, Mahaney etc. hopefully there’ll be some audio to discuss then… but for now here’s MD on preparing to preach…

What does the scripture say?

What does the scripture mean?

How or why do we resist the word?

How does it apply to our mission - personal and corporate application?

Here’s a book that I’d like to read… Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor: The Life and reflection of Tom Carson

Picked this up on Justin Taylor’s blog who quoted CJ Mahaney on this book. Here’s a few quotes from CJ…

“For pastors like myself with average gifts…” <- CJ is a humble guy

“this book will provide us with an eternal perspective of pastoral ministry”

“May every pastor and Christian who reads this book aspire to pass on such an ‘ordinary’ legacy.”

…and here’s a quote from the end of the book

When he died, there were no crowds outside the hospital, no editorial comments in the papers, no announcements on television, no mention in Parliament, no attention paid by the nation. In his hospital room there was no one by his bedside. There was only the quiet hiss of oxygen, vainly venting because he has stopped breathing and would never need it again.

But on the other side all the trumpets sounded. Dad won entrance to the only throne room that matters, not because he was a good man or a great man—he was, after all, a most ordinary pastor—but because he was a forgiven man. And he heard the voice of him whom he longed to hear saying, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant; enter into the joy of your Lord.’

If I’m ever one of the finest Biblical scholars of my day, or have enough skill and credibility to get a book published maybe I’ll write a book about my dad… think he’s probably safe from that dubious honour of me writing a book about him!

CJ Mahaney, speaking on True Greatness from Mark 10, praises God for unanswered prayers. I’m like “What?”, that’s the time I don’t want to praise God, because he hasn’t answered my prayers, he hasn’t done what I asked, was he listening, does he care? These are the questions of course which expose my heart, they expose a wrong view of God…

“God is sovereign, not sentimental” - should add to that that God is both sovereign AND good, he works all things for the good of those who love him (Romans 8:28), so we know that we can trust God when our prayers are not answered, because he is working out his good and perfect will. He is not sentimental, not a therapist in the sky, not a kindof Father Christmas, he gives us what we need, and answers prayers in his perfect timing.

Unanswered prayers also expose false motives, when we resent God for not bowing to our whims, we see our selfish motives, we see that we desire earthly treasure, earthly happiness and pleasure. We see that our prayers did not come from a desire for personal holiness and for the glory of God, but too often from selfish ambition and a desire to order our lives by our own plans and purposes, not God’s.

But, when we praise God for unanswered prayers, we purify ourselves, we turn away from our false view of God, we expose and repent of our false motives. God gets the glory and we learn to trust him more. I didn’t really used to think I was a proud person, (occasionally I was quite proud of that) but I see more and more that my pride is in the form of self-reliance, not trusting God’s plans and his timing, not trusting that he will work for good in all situations. Maybe, praising God for not answering my stupid selfish prayers is the best prayer I can pray…

Listened to a talk by CJ Mahaney today on Humility (Isaiah 66), my first CJ talk and I enjoyed. Also last month I read the book ‘The Enemy Within‘. Both Mahaney and Lundgaard quote Martin Lloyd-Jones’ book ‘Spiritual Depression’ and this idea of talking to yourself. In defeating sin, and specifically defeating pride (the opposite of Humility), and the fear and worries that come from the pride of being self-reliant, Lloyd-Jones offers the remedy of talking to yourself. What does that mean? I think it’s probably two things: reminding yourself of who you are in Christ, your status before God - now justified, being sanctified, awaiting glory. And second, reminding youself of your status before God - a creature dependant on the Creator, sons in need of a Father, sheep in need of a Shepherd. Hymn writer Joseph Scriven summed it up when he wrote:

O what peace we often forfeit, O what needless pain we bear,
All because we do not carry everything to God in prayer.

I say that we must talk to ourselves instead of allowing ‘ourselves’ to talk to us! Do you realize what that means? I suggest that the main trouble in this whole matter of spiritual depression in a sense is this, that we allow our self to talk to us instead of talking to our self. Am I just trying to be deliberately paradoxical? Far from it. This is the very essence of wisdom in this matter. Have you realised that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself? Take those thoughts that come to you the moment you wake up in the morning. You have not originated them, but they start talking to you, they bring back the problems of yesterday, etc. Somebody is talking. Who is talking to you? Your self is talking to you. Now this man’s treatment was this; instead of allowing this self to talk to him he starts talking to himself. ‘Why art thou cast down, O my soul?’ he asks. His soul had been depressing him, crushing him. So he stands up and says: ‘Self, listen for a moment, I will speak to you’. Do you know what I mean? If you do not, you have had but little experience.

The main art in the matter of spiritual living is to know how to handle yourself. You have to take yourself in hand, you have to address yourself, preach to yourself, question yourself. You must say to your soul: ‘Why art thou cast down’–what business have you to be disquieted? You must turn on yourself, upbraid yourself, condemn yourself, exhort yourself, and say to yourself: ‘Hope thou in God’–instead of muttering in this depressed, unhappy way. And then you must go on to remind yourself of God, Who God is, and what God is and what God has done, and what God has pledged Himself to do. Then having done that, end on this great note: defy yourself, and defy other people, and defy the devil and the whole world, and say with this man: ‘I shall yet praise Him for the help of His countenance, who is also the health of my countenance and my God’.

Martin Lloyd-Jones - Spiritual Depression