Today begins our 12th National Conference and today we're here at the Minneapolis Convention

Center.

It's also our final national conference, so it's pretty bittersweet.

We've had a great response and every hotel in downtown Minneapolis is filled up.

So it should be a really wonderful weekend together.

The conference is titled, Look at the Book Reading the Bible for Yourself.

The fun begins this afternoon with seminars from Jerry Bridges, Nancy Guthrie, Ben Stewart,

John Bloom, Jason Meyer, and others.

In this evening, Pastor John, you will deliver a message titled, Scripture, the kindling

of Christian hedonism.

And for those of you who are listening who can't make it to Minneapolis, the conference

will be live streamed as well.

Speaking of reading the Bible for ourselves, we have a question from a frustrated podcast

listener who asks, Pastor John, I've read the Bible and a lot of it just doesn't make sense

to me.

Why should I keep reading if I don't feel like I know enough to understand it?

And what would you say, Pastor John?

Well I don't want this person to go on reading without understanding, so I resonate.

I love poetry and I buy volumes of poetry and I go online and read poets, but if I pick

up a new author that I've not read before, I've done this maybe three times in the last

six months.

And I try about 10 poems and none of them makes any sense to me at all.

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