Gospel Coalition

Just got back from The Gospel Coalition. A very helpful and encouraging time. God is kind.

All the video and audio will be on line for free, according to Dr. Carson, mid-June. I'll post a link when it is up. There are videos of Don Carson defining the gospel (from 1 Cor 15), Tim Keller defining the gospel and applying it to ministry (1 Pet 1-2), Crawford Lorritts on passing on the gospel to the next generation (Ps 78), John Piper on the gospel and the new heavens and the new earth (Rom 8), and the workshops (which can be seen listed on the above link to The Gospel Coalition).

One thing remains to be said, amidst all the gratitude and celebration and inspiration and encouragement. In light of the strong temptations to self-promotion and forgetfulness of James 2:1-5 which I discovered in my own heart while at TEDS, and which, perhaps, many of the other young pastors and seminarians experienced while hanging out with all these guys we love and admire so much, I needed the following words from Andrew Murray, discovered on my dad's bedside table in the hotel one night (commenting on Paul's thorn in the flesh, 2 Cor 12):

Let us look at our lives in the light of this experience, and see whether we gladly glory in weakness, whether we take pleasure, as Paul did, in injuries, in necessities, in distresses. Yes, let us ask whether we have learnt to regard a reproof, just or unjust, a reproach from a friend or enemy, an injury, or trouble, or difficulty into which others bring us, as above all an opportunity of proving how Jesus is all to us, how our own pleasure or honour are nothing, and how humiliation is in very truth what we take pleasure in. It is indeed blessed, the very happiness of heaven, to be so free from self that whatever is said of us or done to us is lost and swallowed up in the thought that Jesus is all.

--Humility, p. 83

May God get us there!