Passion 2012

#passion2012

One of my friends joked that this probably trended just from my tweets. Maybe so. It was that awesome. That even though I felt like a weirdo overly tweeting, I couldn’t pass an opportunity to document (even if in less than 140 characters) what God was presently doing by the power of His Spirit in that place.

How do you explain a 4 day gathering of college students raising over $3 million for the freedom of the 27 million slaves around the globe? You don’t.

You don’t because really you can’t.
For someone who likes explanations, who likes understanding the intricacies of the process, I am learning through experiences like this that we can’t explain God. We can’t explain His glory, why He is, who He is, or even what He does fully. That’s the beauty. That’s what makes Him God.

But when God shows up it’s obvious it’s Him.

He is on the scene. He is rearranging.
He is moving. He is calling.
He is changing. He is making new.
He is. He is. He is. He is.
It’s about Him.

How do you explain a 4 day gathering of college students raising over $3 million for the freedom of the 27 million slaves around the globe? God is here.

The event was big. I don’t know how to describe worshiping with 45,000 other people my age in one place. Maybe a good word would be…heavenly.

Something I loved about Passion was the level of authenticity and humility maintained. It was disproportionally higher than even the scale of the event. I’ll be honest to say that I was a little skeptical coming into it. I had very little expectations, but it was so big. There were so many renowned artists and speakers. But as their leadership commissioned us to be people of prayer and avidly sought out obedience to the Spirit’s promptings themselves…dude, it was all about Jesus.

That gave me so much hope. Hope that the Church is thriving, not just surviving. Hope and trust that God is true to His promises. That when we are submitted to Him He will show up. In ways that are huge. In ways that hold up to the skepticism of a world watching.

I see in myself this tendency to put logistics before leaning, production before prayer, business before stillness. I was reminded and shown at Passion that yes, certainly these things – logistics, production, the work – need to get done (how else would laser lights happen?), but they never supersede the heart of the Story. They never ever supersede Jesus, and whatever it means for us to be near to Him.

We are called to be people who live His Story, not just tell it.

Louie Giglio ended our last main session challenging us to put at the top of our prayer list the prayer from Ephesians 6:19. That we would be a people bold with the Good News of Jesus.

I’m excited to live that this semester with our campus.
It’s my hope that you would too. And that together we could be the Church.

Pray also for me, that whenever I open my mouth, words may be given me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the Gospel. (Ephesians 6:19)

#passion2012

Special thanks to
Brooke Yarbrough & Joel Craig
(Eastview Christian Church)
for hooking me up!

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