The Gospel, Counseling and the Church, by Daniel Montgomery

photo by Chuck Heeke

I want to give a big recognition to Robert Cheong and his whole team who pulled off a great conference on counseling and the church this past week. He and Karen, his wife, worked tirelessly and marshaled an army of volunteers who had this place transformed and exceptionally welcoming to the people coming from 12 states. Great work – it was clearly used for the sake of God’s Kingdom advancing.

Paul Tripp is just a cool dude. He’s fun to hang out with and he’s great to hear preach. And he certainly preached. You can check the Stories From the Road section of Travelblog for full conference coverage (including audio!) but I just wanted to share a few good quotes here to whet your appetitite:

• The gospel is meant to undo people and redo them.
• The cross is a major statement about the authority of God: there is a God that has the right to judge sin. He is Lord, and that is why His anger needed to be appeased. That’s why a Lamb needed to be sacrificed, because He will not compromise His standards.
• I think there is endemic in the body of Christ selective amnesia….we have forgotten the stunning, tragic descriptions of the brokeness in the world.
• Nowhere in Scripture we’re told b/c of Jesus we get a ticket out of a fallen world; there ain’t no such ticket..your Redeemer has chosen to keep you for an extended period of time living in world that is broken.
• Resist spirituality: one of the enemy’s greatest tools is not atheism but counterfeit Christianity…
• The Bible’s picture of suffering is God uses the harsh realities of life in a fallen world to advance His grace in our lives…God will take you where you never intended to go in order to produce in you what you could not achieve on your own.