Books by Pastor John:

I’m used to getting free coffee at church, but it’s not very often that I come away with free books. This past Sunday, Desiring God provided each family two new books by John Piper. To all the folks at Desiring God, “Thanks for sharing!”

There was a bit of well intentioned humor on the opening night of the Desiring God conference when Mark Driscoll presented John Piper with a new coat from his friends at Mars Hill Church.

Check the web site out here:  LINK.

Attendees of the Desiring God 2008 national conference received a bag of goodies at check in.  Here are a few highlights….

The Desiring God Conference is now over.  Unfortunately, I wasn’t feeling well this morning, so I missed this morning’s session with John Piper.  Fortunately, all of the sessions are available on the Desiring God Resources Page.  you can access the messages for this conference here:  LINK.  I’m sure I’ll watch several of the messages again.  I was personally challenged by each message and will be unpacking the things I learned in the coming weeks.  This was a very well run conference.  The Desiring God staff and 100+ volunteers ran a seamless “show”.  There were many great vendors and ministries in the book area.  I especially enjoyed browsing materials from Crossway, Banner of Truth and Reformation Heritage Books.  The folks from LOGOS Bible Software had a table as well.  They very graciously answered questions and did demonstrations for all of us curious conference attendees.  LOGOS Bible software carries a large number of John Piper’s books as well as his sermon manuscript library.  You can learn more at www.logos.com/piper.  All in all, this was a good experience.  I’ll have to invite a few friends to tag along with me next time.  The 4.5 hours alloted for lunch and dinner break got a little lonely.

The audio of Sinclair Ferguson’s talk at the 2008 Desiring God National Conference is available here:  LINK.  They are trying to get the audio of each session posted within an hour of the presentation and hope to have the video of each session posted within a day.

I’m still a bit groggy & not yet through my first cup of coffee, but I wanted to take a minute on jot down my thoughts on day 1 of the Desiring God 2008 Nation Conference.  There are over 3000 people in attendance this year.  There seemed to be a nice mix of folks from all of the U.S. and all over the world.  the book area has a decent selection of materials.  I noticed an illustrated book on Job by John Piper that looked pretty interesting.  I was happy to see Mark Driscoll’s Death by Love available as well, even though it doesn’t actually realease until Tuesday.  The highlight of last night was getting to listen to Sinclair Ferguson.  He spoke on James 3:1-12.  His talk was broken up into 3 parts:  1.  Walk-through / explanation of James 3:1-12, 2. James 3:1-12 in the context of the book of James, 3. James 3:1-12 in the context of the gospel of Jesus Christ.  The most significant part of the talk focused on the difficulty of taming the tongue.  And just as Job made a convenant with his eyes, a similar covenant could be made with our own eyes, tongue, hands etc.  The talke finished with a call to saturate ourselves in the word of God as it is the key to transforming the tongue.  Following Ferguson’s talk they had a speaker panel hosted by Justin Taylor.  The speakers were sinclair Ferguson, John Piper & Mark Driscoll.  Many of you read Mark Driscoll’s post earlier in the week about whey he loves John Piper.  In that post, he noted that he though John Piper only had 1 coat, so in the context of answer a question about that post, he actually presented John Piper with a tweed jacket that has the Desiring God logo embroidered on it.  John Piper put it on and wore it for the remainder of the evening.  I’m looking forward to day 2 of the conference and will be hitting the road shortly.

Looks like there are 50+ bloggers that will be sticking around after the Saturday night session for the open house for bloggers.  I’m sure a few of these individuals will also be live blogging the event.

• Justin Taylor, Between Two Worlds
• Carolyn McCulley, Radical Womanhood (if she can make it after her book signing)
• Abraham Piper, 22 Words
• Molly Piper, The Pipers
• Mike Anderson, The Resurgence
• Marc Heinrich, Purgatorio
• Johnathan Bowers, The Fool’s Gold
• Josh Etter, Of First Importance
• Steve Spearman, The Fat Triplets
• Mark McDaniel, The McDaniel Blog
• Chris Roberts, Seek the Holy
• Michael Dewalt, Gospel-Centered Musings
• Tim Crummett, Small Man Big God
• Michael Krahn, A Mind Awake
• Brian Phillips, One Thing
• Kassie Phillips, A Living Hope
• Ben Seal, Unbreakable Joy
• Nick Kennicott, Reforming Students
• Chris Meirose, Because I Said So
• Ben Janssen, From Christian Legalism to Christian Hedonism
• Charles Jannace
• Nancy Guthrie, Random Thoughts
• James Pruch, Beneath the Cross
• Eric Schumacher, An Infant in a Cradle
• Dave Herding, Momento Mori
• Michelle Keller, The Adventures of a Mommy Missionary
• Anna VanEaton, Ingrafted Counselor
• Jonathan Shupe, Shupe Shire
• Adam Evers, The Legend
• Benjamin Oetken
• Amber Burger, The Currency of Grace is Where My Song Begins
• Shaun Tabatt, Bible Geek Gone Wild
• Shannon Jordan, A Reforming Mom
• Steve Spray, Old Red Hat
• Latisha Grady, In a Few Words
• John Murphy, High Fliers
• Harry Kraus, Grace from the Cutting Edge
• Nick Jackson, Backstage
• Kevin and Janice Evans, The Evans Family
• Chris Maddocks, Gospel Logic
• Christy Tennant, Ferry Dust
• Mike West, Stage Fright
• Kathy Doremus, Hungry Women
• Robert Minto, The Veil Away
• Tope Koleoso, Adrian Warnock
• Cory Dahl
• Andrea Sprague, Our Adoption Road
• Jane Swanson, 54 and More
• Jenna Scheetz, All the Way Home
• Phyllis Nelson, Confessions of a Pastor’s Wife
• Scott Williams, FamilyLife Culture Watch
• Tracey Lanter, FamilyLife MomBlog