t4g - Day 3

Well, back to the carousel...at least that's what Mahaney called it today. Well, first, John Piper gave his usual fire-breathing encouragement for us to stop being a bunch of American idolaters. Hope everyone took it well. Actually, to be specific, he went through six texts in Hebrews that call us to radical Christian sacrifice, or going to gain Christ "outside the camp," so that when the world sees us, they actually see that we're different. Only the biggest possible vision for His supremacy actually brings glory to Him! Seeing this is why we all love Piper so much. Mahaney though was downright convicting to me. Especially the first of his three points: Greatfulness to God communicated to the sheep by my identifying "evidences of grace" in them. I already knew about this lingo within Sovereign Grace, but had somehow neglected the so obviously contageous effect that this joy has on an entire ministry. That has to change in me. While I was chewing on that on my way back to the hotel, we turned around to hold the door open for the guy behind us--it was Piper. We just chatted (actually, mostly me chattering, but it was good to meet him in person) for about a minute. I can say that both he and Mahaney exude a Spirit-filled, down-to-earth reality to them that this movement would do well to emulate...not in a cheap mimicking way, but in being moved by what moves them. God made us all totaly different and that's good. Which, by the way, I would hope that the 5,000 plus hearers of these 8 men do not so much compare them to each other, or demand that they score sectarian points for them or become for them some consumer event, but rather see in them a glorious God who has given us eight unique and edifying angles in a prism through which to see how ministers of this "young, restless, and reformed" army are to conduct themselves back home. But bloggers will be bloggers, and so there will no doubt be that mindless and counterproductive yapping. For us, we return to Boise, to the carousel. But if we believe what we just heard, there can be nothing "ordinary" about it.