“One design of God in the gospel, is to bring us to make God the object of our undivided respect, that he may engross our regard every way, that whatever natural inclination there is in us, he may be the center of it, and that God may be all in all.”
Jonathan Edwards, miscellany #510.
“Take all of your arguments against the inevitability of e-books and substitute the word ‘horse’ for ‘book’ and the word ‘car’ for ‘e-book.’”
John Siracusa on the future of e-books, Kindle readers, and the like.
“The daily pace he kept for 30 years meant that many weeks he was speaking more than he was sleeping.”
John Piper speaking recently about the tireless preaching of George Whitefield, whose sum total of sermons and exhortations during the span of his ministry reached upward of 30,000.
Any fellow bloggers attending the Gospel Coalition NatCon?
If so, I invite you to the 2009 Band of Bloggers gathering (April 22 in Chicago). Seven of the most influential reformed bloggers will be in the house—tbrister, jtaylor, manderson, tchallies, ejohnson, ttchividjian, smccoy—addressing how we can better serve the church through our blogging efforts.
And there will be free books.
I will have the honor of addressing the topic: How can bloggers steward the teaching of the young, old, and the dead? I hope to encourage other average bloggers (like myself) to consider using their blogging skills to steward the wisdom of others, working alongside their pastors and church to blog locally, how to identify men who should have broader influence within the Church and how serve alongside them (C.J. Mahaney), and how to use blogs to spread the influence of the timeless men who are no longer with us (Herman Bavinck). These are topics near my heart, but thoughts I have never developed and articulated for presentation. So please pray for me.
Registration opens soon. More BoB’09 conference details here.
See you there.
Two notes:
Interview
This morning I completed an interview with Welsh blogger Guy Davies, aka the Exiled Preacher. Guy is a sharp and prolific pastor/blogger. He asked some great questions, like: If Jonathan Edwards was alive, do you think he would be blogging? … Which writers have you found most helpful, and why? You can now read the interview here. I think you will enjoy it. Me enjoyed it.
Conference
Also, I’ll be out for a bit, traveling to North Carolina to attend my second 20/20 Collegiate Conference at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. Conference topic: The relevance of the Gospel in everyday life.
Teachers include Daniel Aiken (Southeastern Seminary president), Mark Driscoll, Bill Brown, and C.J. Mahaney.
Last year musical worship was led by the very capable, and very cross-centered, Daniel Renstrom. I hear he will be leading again, and I look forward to it.
In the Wake Forest, N.C. area? This is a collegiate conference worth the price of admission ($25-35).
Enjoy your weekend!
Tony
Absalom stole David’s throne and stole from David the hearts of Israel. And David hightailed out of Dodge.
Overnight, David was tossed from his throne and hunted in the wilderness. Now he is pressed against a dark cave, listening in the distance for the sound of approaching hunters, enduring the heart-stopping responses to the smallest sounds, listening for the crack of twigs, holding his breath.
David cried out to God.
I fear too often the god I cry out to is a god of my imagination, fitted with padded boxing gloves, a stick for a sword, and a cap gun to make a lot of noise. He becomes a god who cannot break a sweat, and could never break an enemy.
This is not our God.
Our God is the lifter of heads, holding up the downcast, the discouraged, the fearful, and the hunted. But He is also dressed for battle, at war against sin, and fully aware of every enemy crouching in the bushes waiting to rise.
God is also the smasher of faces.
And as violent as this sounds, it’s under the shield of this God that David finally rests, being hunted but no longer in danger, shielded from the blows of his enemy, released from fear, released from the adrenaline kick that kept him watchful and alert, free from the worry that raced his heart, released from tension, sustained in God, now slowly becoming limp, a powerless body mercifully given over to sleep.
Perhaps because we fail to balance both sides of our God, we lack confidence in Him as our shield. And we don’t sleep well. We respond to the blows of life as if there is no iron shield to protect us, as if we are abandoned in the cave by a God who is too busy, too unconcerned, or simply too incapable to help us.
The god who cannot break his enemies is a god who will not comfort the fear-filled.
Among a thousand worries we are safe in Him. And if this is our God we have no cause for fear. No longer do we need fear over the economy, worry over personal finances, and toss and turn all night in the sleepless tumult of tension, worry, hypotheticals, and the fear of the unknown.
This Psalm teaches me a simple lesson: God is both the One who lifts heads and breaks teeth. A powerful, sustaining, defending God like this can remove all fear. He is strong enough to spread a blanket of sleep over the foxhole of life.
Tony Reinke 