Last night's aim and the aim of the whole conference is that you would desire and

pursue with all your heart a God-centered ministry and a God-centered life because God is a God-centered

God.

Now, what I'd like to do this morning is to talk about what will be required of you if you do that, namely courage and boldness,

broken-hearted boldness, contrite, courage.

Because as I look in my own heart, and as I look at the lay of the land, the world right now,

we have that banner flying now, flying. It's on a big brace. We have a church that's right on the edge, 13 blocks from downtown Minneapolis.

And as people come over the freeway into the city there's Bethlehem and on

top of the church we put up these banners about 25 feet long about four feet high

and we change them every few weeks and we try to make

them relevant to what's happening in the city and so on so thousands of people see

them and the one that's up there now is Christ when all is shaking that went up September 11.

And that's, you know, courage is not the absence of fear.

You know this, it's the resolved to act in spite of being afraid.

And so that's what's going to be required of us is courage.

Because, picking up on last night now,

if you call, and I'm going to assume now that this is church leadership in this room. I know there's non-pastors here, but those of you who are not pastors just forgive me if I'd say about us sometimes, us pastor. So give them a break and let them

enjoy that kind of camaraderie with me for a little bit here and the rest of you can

listen in.

But if we call for a radical engagement of the affections,

like Psalm 7325 on earth there's nothing I desire beside you to call

you people to that they will feel threatened. If you say to them, do you desire anything

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