The past couple days have been amazing for me. I knew that God had been working in my life and helping me realize the reality of the Gospel. Just when I thought that I was getting a grip on things, the Lord shows me ways that the Gospel is more vast and deep than I had known before. As the speakers told us, it is not about the name of the conference. It is about the meaning of the conference. We are uniting together as true believers to seek to restore the reality of the gospel in the hearts of preachers and believers. It should be very obvious to all that there has been a deafening effect to the gospel that has come from the abuse of the gospel and lack of truthfulness to the doctrines of God. The hope of those behind the conference was that we might regain the light of the true gospel again and preach and teach to those for whom we are responsible.The conference took place in Louisville, Kentucky and was comprised of over 3,000 attendee’s, 7 speakers, 7 teaching sessions, and 5 discussion panels. The attendee’s came from as far away as India and as near as those attending the nearby Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. The speakers included the following men:

• Mark Dever (with 9 Marks Ministries; pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church)
• Ligon Duncan (Moderator of the PCA; senior minister of First Presbyterian Church)
• C.J. Mahaney (president of Sovereign Grace Ministries)
• Albert Mohler (9th president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary)
• John Macarthur (pastor-teacher of Grace Community Church; president of Grace to You, and Master’s Seminary and College)
• John Piper (Pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church; leader of Desiring God Ministries)
• R.C. Sproul (minister of preaching and teaching at St. Andrews Chapel; founder of Ligonier Ministries)

As you can imagine, the messages were great. I will comment later on each session one-by-one after I have a chance to meditate on them once again. (Warning: the recaps may be sporadic and have lengths of time in between.) My brother has posted some pictures that I took from the conference on his website. (This is why you will not see me in them. For my Northland friends, I will post that pic in my Pictures page.) You can see the pictures by clicking here. Please stay posted for more info. Feel free to check out the Together for the Gospel Blog, my brother’s blog, or Challie’s.

Amazed by grace,

Josh

Don’t ask why I was thinking this, but it came to mind the other day. I was thinking that I felt like a porta-potty. Through the Lord good and sovereign hand of guidance, my girlfriend and I decided to break up becuase our focus was not on Christ. Things were evident that we should break up. No kidding, within two weeks of breaking up I had at least four people trying to hook me up with people. I felt like the little red thing on the porta-potty had just changed to green! Something is definitely wrong with that. Of course with the lack of person to put a relationship affection I also found myself sometimes wanting someone there to share feelings and things also. I too was at fault. I had to correct myself…not that wanting someone was bad. I believe that God has created woman to be able to share that with. I think my focus was wrong when I find myself desiring something other than what God has for me right now. Praise God that He knows what is best. His ways are perfect and cannot be thwarted; therefore, I must conclude that God desires to use me single now. I also find that when my mind has been shifted back to this right thinking, God is able to use me in ways I would not have recognized before.Anyways, just a thought…let me know what ya’ll think (whoever ya’ll is)

Trusting in His tender care,
Josh

PS – This week is a week that I have been waiting for for a long time. The Lord allowed my brother, some people from my church, and I to go to the Together for the Gospel Conference. Check it out and pray that the Lord uses it greatly in my life. An occasion such as this is not very common and I’m looking forward to seeing what the Lord is going to do. I’ll post more about it later. Praise God for His good and perfect gift!

I have been kind of getting discouraged lately because the Lord has been doing so much in my life and then when life gets busy, I try to stay in the Word and then earthly responsibilities seem to consume my time. I was thinking about that this morning and then song started playing from my playlist that gave me huge reminder of my redemption. Christ has paid our price. We will sin because we are human, and the very thought that we will be able to worship Him forever just makes me want to dance and shout for joy! What if we were perfect? There would be no joy in our earthly pain and misery. Praise God that Adam sinned so we would die and that Christ paid the price for me to live!

Glorying in my redeemer!

Josh

PS – I added a lot more pics, so check them out. I’m off to bed for a good day’s sleep!