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Passion 2012
Right at the end of my Christmas break, I had the opportunity to go to Atlanta, Georgia for the Passion 2012 conference with an eclectic group of about 30 poeple from Bethel, my church here, another church, Notre Dame, IWU, Indianapolis, etc. If you don’t know anything about Passion then I can sum it up for you in one word: AWESOME! Well, a better description would be: God did awesome things there!
There were awesome speakers: Francis Chan, Louie Giglio, Beth Moore, and John Piper. There were awesome singers/bands: David Crowder Band, Chris Tomlin, Kristian Stanfill, Matt Redman, etc. (Just so you know, there are going to be a lot of good worship songs coming out that were launched at Passion.) There were also about 45,000 college students all gathered in the Georgia Dome. (Imagine being surrounded by 45,000 people where the norm is to raise your hands, worship, and praise God!)
The speakers talked about all sorts of topics, but it was all focused on the word of God and giving God the glory! We focused a lot in Ephesians and one session was even Francis Chan, Beth Moore, John Piper, and Lacrae reading the entire book of Ephesians. This was so powerful! Another thing that the speakers focused on was coming out of the death that we are in (Luke 7). Because of our sin, we are on our stretchers being led to the grave, but God, not being put off by our uncleanness, reaches for us and pulls us from death into life. They challenged us not to hold onto our stretchers that are guiding us to death.
Also, we had an issue that we focused on all week–slavery. Did you know that there are 27 MILLION slaves in the world today? That’s more than any other time in the history of mankind. Even in the African slave trade. We had a goal to partner with several organizations in our nation and around the world by raising 1 million dollars for them to not only rescue people from slavery but also to give them a hope for the future. But when God wants to move then he does because we, as poor as we are, raised over 3 million dollars for GOD’s glory to be known. God is SO good! Check this out if you want to learn more!
So here’s the deal…Passion 2013 will be amazing. Here’s another thing…you should go! Here’s another thing…don’t sit back and see the world go on without the love of God–”do something now!” “Together we are a force for good!”
