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DG Pastor’s Conference Wrap Up

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Now that I’m back from the 2011 Desiring God Conference for Pastors, here are some reflections on each of the messages.

Session 1 – Cultivating Private Prayer as a Pastor – Joel Beeke

This was a great kick off session, full of quotes and much practicality. I really felt conviction of my lack of prayerlessness through this sermon. His two paths of application were Take Hold of Self and Take Hold of God. Matt Perman tweeted that this was the best sermon on prayer he’s ever heard. I am in relative agreement, although this wasn’t an exposition as much as a topical unfolding of the subject of prayer.

Session 2 – Helping Your People Discover the Praying Life – Paul Miller

If you’ve read Miller’s book, A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World, then this session will be a helpful, one talk summary of all that this book teaches. It was really encouraging as well.

Session 3 – Prayer as a Way of Walking in Love: A Personal Journey – Francis Chan

This talk was a testimony of sorts as to how Chan has experienced answered prayer in his walk with the Lord. Great question in this talk was “Do you still believe God answers prayer?” Very motivational to the practice of prayer.

Session 4 – He Kissed the Rose and Felt the Thorn: Living and Dying in the Morning of Life Robert Murray McCheyne – John Piper

I love these biographical messages by Piper each year. This year’s didn’t disappoint. He weaved what made this young man burn with passion for God by showing his conversion and preparation for a young life. It ended up looking at the place of prayer in McCheyne’s life. Again, very encouraging.

Session 5 – Leading Family Worship – Joel Beeke

This talk had 4 goals: to lay out a paradigm for family worship, to discuss the practice of it, to lead us to preach on this and to consider more effective ways of training others in this. This talk was replete with practical ways one could go about practicing family worship.

Session 6 – Unreached Peoples and the Power of Prayer – Jerry Rankin

Another highlight of the DG conference is the missions talk or how does the subject of the conference relate to the fulfilling of the Great Commission. Rankin gave a call for us to go about obeying the Great Commission and realize that as we pray for the nations God might be changing our hearts to go ourselves.

Session 7 – Q & A – Speakers Panel

The conference typically wraps up with a session dealing with some questions the conference inspired. Helpful way to review and hear about the subject matter again.

Overall Reflection: I loved attending this conference. DG always does a great job of leading us in singing, giving us opportunities to pray and helping us think through subject matters. I personally would have liked to see more Biblical expositions, but found the messages helpful. I think, also, that sometimes commendations were confused with commands. It’s easy for pastors (especially) to treat applications as matters of obeying or disobeying what God has actually said. There was some blurring of that. However, these are minor assessments. Overall, I know that I need to be about the work of prayer in ministry and this conference helped give me avenues to flesh this out more in my life.

My Week…in Minneapolis, MN for Storm of 2011 and…

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…the 2011 Desiring God Pastor’s Conference:
Traveled here yesterday with men from the church. With the big storm coming, we drove straight through and ended up getting in around 12:45AM today. Got into the hotel and slept pretty well. Today, we will have the conference later today, but at Noon, we are meeting with one of our church’s supported missionaries.

If you think of us, pray that God would encourage us as we think about being people of prayer and leading Crestview in this regard.

Weekend Recap – Prayer and Prayer

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Well, we had another great Lord’s Day yesterday. In the AM, we looked at Matthew 6:10 in a sermon entitled Model Prayer (2). (There was a problem with the audio, but a manuscript will be available on Crestview’s Sermon Page.) Specifically, we looked at praying God-centered prayers for the Father’s reign and the Father’s will.

In the evening, my small group finished Thabiti’s book by seeing a healthy church member is a prayer warrior. In the course of discussing that, I mentioned some tools:

Valley of Vision is a collection of Puritan prayers.

Andrew Case has the Scripture based prayer books for husbands, wives and children.

Operation World will email you an unreached people group each day.

Donald Whitney spoke of using the Psalms to pray each day.

Matthew Henry also has a Scriptural way to pray the Model Prayer.

Grab these tools and be helped by them.

Weekend Recap – Prayer, Prayer & Families

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Today’s sermons are now online.

In the AM, we started looking at the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6:9. The sermon, Model Prayer (1), discussed 2 instructions for prayer based on “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name…”. What most people (including myself) were amazed at was how Jesus always called God His Father in prayer, except on the cross (my God). This seems to inform our intimate approach to Him as our Father because of what Jesus has done.

In the PM, we started a series entitled the Gospel Centered Family with a sermon on Prayer and the Family. I tried to highlight how, for families, we must pray, teach prayer and model prayer. I also tried to bring Gospel-centered insights to this.

Hopefully God uses these words to continue to form us into a people of prayer.

Prayer and the Gospel

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Great word from Tim Keller on prayer and the Gospel:

One of the most basic things that the gospel does is change prayer from mere petition to fellowship and the praise of his glory. Galatians 4:6-7 teaches us that when we believe the gospel, we not only become God’s children legally, but we receive the Spirit in order to experience our sonship. The Spirit leads us to call out passionately to God as our tender and loving Father. The Spirit calls out ‘Abba’ (4:7). In the very next verse Paul refers to this experience as “knowing God” (4:8). We do not just know and believe that God is holy and loving, but we actually experience contact with his holiness and his love in personal communion with him.

I don’t know if your prayer life reflects this reality or not, but may you look to the Gospel again and find that God loves you in spite of who you are. Run to Him as your Father.

Weekend Recap – Prayer, Following and Missions

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Yesterday AM’s sermon, Wordy Prayer, from Jesus’ words on prayer in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6:7-8) is now online. Basically, I understand Jesus encouraging us to not get too hung up on the content or linguistical make-up of the prayers. Many were encouraged that I formed a new word during the sermon “cakeness”. At any rate, hopefully the sermon helps people to go hard after the Father Himself in prayer.

In the evening, we continued our work through Thabiti’s What Is a Healthy Church Member? (IX Marks). My group had great discussion on chapter 9: a church member is a humble follower.

Finally, our weekend at Crestview included a visit from missionaries we support in Brazil. The Bacheller Family visited us and updated on their current ministry. We enjoyed good fellowship with them for the entire weekend and many in our church had the privilege of hosting them for a meal. Thanks to all in the church who made this a possibility.

Weekend Recap – Hypocritical Prayer

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Yesterday’s sermon, Hypocritical Prayer, from Matthew 6:5-6 is now online. This sermon helped kick off our Week of Prayer. As a church, our elders have devoted a week to turn and look to God, expressing our dependence on Him. This sermon also started a series of about 7 sermons on Jesus’ words on prayer in the Sermon on the Mount, so it was a great day.

The sermon showed the rewards of hypocritical prayer and the rewards of secret prayer. What was staggering to me is that God promises that when we go to Him in secret prayer He will be there. He will reward. I hope you can listen to this and find the confidence to go to Him in prayer.

Pray for Sudan

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The Africa Inland Mission urges us to Pray for Sudan. Here’s the need:

Sudan – Africa ’s largest nation – needs our prayers. A referendum to decide whether the already semi-autonomous south will secede from the north is scheduled for January 9, 2011. This land has already seen two million die as a result of over two decades of civil war between the north and oil-rich south. Pray that this will not happen again.

We are urged to pray for:

• Please pray for peace and acceptance of the results of the referendum, whatever they may be.
• Pray for those organizing the referendum; that all preparations will be made in time, and that the process would be fair.
• Pray for Sudan ’s leaders: President Salva Kiir in the South, and President Omar al-Bashir in the North.
• Pray that AIM ministries in Sudan will be able to continue, and that God will continue to open doors for more outreach in this nation that so needs the Prince of Peace.
• Pray that the Church in Sudan will play a large part in the reconciliation process in Sudan and that it will take the lead in holistic development.
• Pray for AIM’s team of missionaries who currently serve in southern Sudan and desire to stay.

Will you join others in praying for these needs.