Good Stuff

(If you don't get anything else from this post, or if you don't even want to read past the first line... I would love it if you could just get one idea. Choose good things to fill your mind. Listen to things that point you toward God. In fact, I just heard John Piper quote Jonathan Edwards in a sermon about the Pastor as a Scholar. He said,

“I should think myself in the way of my duty, to raise the affections of my hearers as high as I possibly can, provided they are affected with nothing but truth, and with affections that are not disagreeable to the nature of what they are affected with.”
–Jonathan Edwards, A Treatise Concerning the Religious Affections

I point this quote out because of this thought of "affections". I know that there is quite a bit more in that quote that we could unpack, and I know that there is quite a bit more that Piper was wanting to point out from that quote, but I mention it to push you in the direction of an affection toward the things of God.

Listen to things about God. Listen to things that lift Him up. Fill your mind with teachings and sermons and deep intellectual thoughts of the One True God... Not this meaningless blather that is out on the airwaves today.

Because of these kinds of thoughts and also because of the way that life goes, my wife and I have been on a sermon kick lately. We have been listening to sermons pretty much all of the time. *Said in my best Napoleon Dynamite voice.* When we figured out that our phones had a slot for a memory chip, we really got going. We started out wanting to put music on the phone, but we have both gradually transferred to listening to sermons.

I would love to go into detail about how important it is to fill your mind with the right kinds of media, but I won't jump in to the deep end right now. I may do that in another blog post, but for now I will refer you to this site: Media Talk 101. One of the guys from that ministry came to our school. Here is a video from their site that you might find interesting:



To fill your head with good stuff should be a priority. If you are bored with good stuff... Well, that should tell you something. Many pastors and speakers have their stuff available for download.

Here are some links to some of my favorites:
(Most of these links are to a feed. If you are not familiar with how to use feeds, then I would recommend Google Reader. If you don't know how to use Google Reader, then please feel free to e-mail me.)

North Point Community Church Weekly Podcast (Normally this is Andy Stanley)
North Hills Community Church (This is the Church that I attend)
Desiring God Sermon Audio (with John Piper)
Walk in the Word (with James MacDonald)


Here are a few others that I have found recently. These links are to static pages that have links to files available for download. I don't know how long these are going to stay up, so download quickly.

Next Conference Resources (from Josh Harris)
Christian Audio offers a free download every month. They also have several other free downloads that they offer.
Death is not Dying is a free download that is totally worth your time. I have mentioned it here and here.
Free Audio Bible from Faith Comes By Hearing

This list is definitely not exhaustive. I simply wanted to share a few good morsels that I have found. I have a feeling that I might share more on this later, but this is enough for now.

I typed this sporadically, so please let me know of any typos.