Lord, this is our collective confession from our hearts with as much authenticity as you have

given to us. Jesus is our Lord. And we hear the words of the Apostle ringing in our ears,

nobody can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit. Therefore miracles are happening

all over this room. And if there is anyone, oh God, who cannot from the heart say, my Lord,

my God, my Savior, my treasure, do that miracle now I pray.

In Jesus' great name, we collectively say amen.

I want to begin with a story that I hope will encourage younger people among us because I know

there's so many. I hope this story puts a passion in you, it's not already there,

to do something significant with your life and not to waste your life and to do it soon because you

may never be old. The theme of this first Godward life conference is the pleasures of God.

That's rooted first in the Bible because the Bible says in so many places what pleases God.

And secondly, it's rooted in the life of a pastor from Scotland who died in 1678,

his name was Henry Schugel. He died when he was young, 27. And I draw attention to his age

because the impact of his life even though it was so short was massive. Here I am, 2022,

talking about him and this conference exists because he existed. He wrote one thing,

it wasn't even a book, it was a letter, 100 page letter which came to be called the life of God

in the soul of man and he wrote it for a friend and it begins my dear friend. The friend began to

circulate the 100 page letter and then Gilbert Burnett, the bishop at the time, published it in the

year that Henry Schugel died, that's over 300 years ago. Now here's the copy of this book,

this is a beautiful little edition that I didn't even know existed from Crossway.

And I'm going to give it away right now and I need your help, okay? So you stand up and the first hand

that he sees go up who meets these two qualifications is going to get the book, right?

...