PASSION 2015
Passion. It's defined in Merriam-Webster's dictionary as: a strong feeling of enthusiasm or excitement for something or about doing something.
January 16th-18th I had one of the most encouraging weekends of my 17 year old life. It's an event called Passion. In a nutshell, Passion is a weekend long Christian conference, put on for college students, high school seniors (that's me!) and their leaders. There are 6 "sessions" where people come and speak, BIG people in the Christian speaker world. Before each session there is some major amazing worship going on by popular Christian artists including Chris Tomlin, David Crowder Band, Kristian Stanfill and more. There are also community groups/family groups.
It was amazing. And I should mention that when I say Christian conference, I mean it was in Atlanta in the Phillip's Arena with around 15,000 people.
Two years ago a group from First Pres went and when they came home and talked about how absolutely awesome it was I knew I wanted to go the first chance I could.
Which is this year. So I bought my ticket in November and have been not so patiently waiting. I mean, I did have a lot going on, but well. Anyways.
I was nervous. I mean, I am one of the youngest ones in my grade anyways, and so going to be with a bunch of college students? I knew it would end up being a good experience but it still kinda freaked me out. But nevertheless, I made plans to go with some First Pres college kids (Taylor, Matt, and David) and our fearless First Pres youth leader Taiter.
And so I headed out Friday afternoon bound for Columbia to get Taylor, and then on to Atlanta. Well if you wanna be real, Taylor actually drove from Columbia to Atlanta so I guess technically we (as in Taiter and I) didn't get her but well you get the picture.
Taylor's sweet aunt and her family opened their home to us. They live right outside of ATL. It was an easy drive into the city to the arena. So we had free accommodations. And such sweet accommodations. I LOVED their house, it was just so cute.
So anyways, back to Friday.. Taiter, Taylor, and I arrived at her aunt's around 4:30. Matt and David were coming from Clemson (Matt goes to Anderson but he had to get David.) and they were running late. We ate a quick bite and then took the MARTA (did I say that right? "the" MARTA, or is it just MARTA?) to the Arena. Checked in, got my wristband and ID and we found some seats. David and Matt managed to make it in JUST as Kristian Stanfill started the first song. In case you don't know this about me, I love love love me so Kristian Stanfill. He sang at FiTS (our summer weeklong conference our church attends) my Freshman year and I have been listening to his music since. As soon as the first song started I knew it was bound to be a good experience.
The first session was led by Louie Giglio who is the pastor at Passion City Church and one of the few main people who founded and lead Passion. After some powerful music, Louie started straight off beginning with, "It is finished." Interesting thing to start with, right?
The notes I wrote down include the following:
"Self is finished."
"Christians should be excited because WE ARE NOT DEAD."
"When Jesus died, we came to life. And without that, we have no songs to sing and no purpose to be here."
And afterward Louie finished, and we did some more worshipping, we went to community groups. I was very nervous about community groups. Basically, it's a way for this huge gathering of so many people to get personal. Every person received a wrist band that was either blue, orange, green, yellow, purple, and red. All 5 of us from First Pres had a different color. This was going way out of my comfort zone, forcing me to find new friends, and I'm happy to say that it was WAY better than I expected. First of all, it turned out that the majority of those in the blue group were high school seniors. While there were college kids, they split us up so I really only had interaction in community groups with people my age. This was a huge relief to me. And God provided for me big time. In the big session with everyone, there were two girls sitting in front of me who also had blue wrist bands. They turned around and we talked for a couple minutes and they were kind enough to let me walk with them to our community group (all the groups were in huge ballrooms across the street from the arena). When we made it in there we realized just how big the Blue community group was (around 3,000 people). We went up closer to the front and sat down on one of the hundreds of carpet squares. You see, we had cold concrete floors so the gave us huge 8 foot by 8 foot carpet squares. Once all 3,000 of us were in there, our community group leader came on stage and said that we were about to find our family groups for the weekend. First he split us up into high school seniors and college kids, high schooler seniors on one side of the room and college kids on the other. Then he asked us to find someone of the same gender with the same birth month as me. Luckily one of the girls who I had walked over with was born in July, so we linked arms like we were supposed to and sat down. Then we had to find a pair of the opposite gender with the same birth month as us. We turned around, yelled July, and two boys were right there. Then as a group of four, we were told to turn around and find the closest group of four and sit down with them. So we did. And somehow we ended up with an extra person so we had a family group of nine and it was honestly some of the best time of my weekend. I really became close to those 8, even though we were only together for less than five hours of the weekend.
It was like midnight when we got back to Taylor's aunt's house. I was tired. Got in bed and it felt like I was asleep for 20 minutes before the alarm went off and we were up again. We left and somehow made it back to the arena in time for family groups. I can't say it enough, I really really enjoyed my family group. During that morning time we discussed John 15:1-8 which is about Jesus being the vine. One thing that really stuck with me from that time was "God's past faithfulness is the proof of His provisions". Another one was that "God takes things away that don't provide fruit and replaces them with things that do." Those both hit me.
After family groups, I met back up with the First Pres crew and we found seats for the FOUR sessions of the main day. It was a lot of stuff. But I really did enjoy it.
The speaker of our second session was John Piper. If you're unfamiliar with him, he is an amazing Christian.. trying to find the right word.. theologian maybe? He is BRILLIANT. A lot of what He said is really really deep but so so good. I think the thing that really stuck out to me from when he spoke was one particular quote: "Christianity is the only movement that was created by, and is sustained by its news.". If you take the time to analyze that, it's totally understandable. The news is the gospel. Christianity was created by the gospel. It is sustained by the gospel. I really enjoyed John Piper.
Then it was lunch time! Can I just say that Passion fed 15,000+ people the most efficient I have ever seen? All of 15.000+ had food in our hands within 15 minutes. It was really neat to watch. Maybe that's just me. Anyways, third session was by a guy named Judah Smith. I honestly didn't really get much out of his talk. Maybe it was because it was right after lunch.. I don't know. But he was funny.
The fourth session was led by LECRAE. It was so neat. I have been to a concert of his and have been listening to his music for years. But hearing him give a talk was really cool. He talked about giving God glory. His analogies were awesome too. He used one where he talked about going to Beverly Hills and walking into just a store and trying to find a plain white cotton shirt. The only ones he could find were $600. He asked the employee of the store why a plain white cotton shirt would be so expensive. The reply? "Because it has the designer's name on it.". In the same way, Christians are valuable because God's name is on us. He did an awesome job.
So after Lecrae we had a break for a few hours. We headed down the street to find somewhere to eat. Along with all 15,000 of our friends. We ended up finding a cute mexican/brazilian restaurant and I had a really delicious quesadilla. Actually I really wish I had another one right now. It was really good.
Then we went back to the arena.. had some awesome worship time. And then they introduced a speaker named Christine Caine.
Wow.
I really really really really enjoyed hearing her speak. She was easily my favorite speaker of the weekend. I think because what she talked about just resonated so much with what was on my heart.
She really spoke about how we are to serve others while on earth. I really appreciated that she first discussed that we can't receive salvation through works, but through believing in Jesus alone. I took so many notes and I really just want to share a lot of them so I am. "This is not a game on earth. This is the fight for the souls of humanity." Isn't that deep?? She then spoke about the story of how Elijah found Elisha, which is told in 1 Kings 19. Elisha was plowing a field behind a team of 12 oxen. That was gross stinky work. "Put your plow to the ground and start plowing now." She brought up 1 Corinthians 15:58 which says that "in the Lord your labor is never in vain." "If you don't plow, what is your purpose as a Christian?" As in if you're a Christian and you're not working of the glory of God, what are you doing?
I think the biggest thing I liked that she spoke about was her talking about "If you don't spend years growing your muscles for plowing, you will not make it." Sometimes I am so tired after spending Tuesdays with my kids. I want to give up. I get worn out. But I am building strength in order that one day I can use the skills that I have learned to do bigger things. I know I am where I am supposed to be right now.
I also liked that she said "We get to co-work with the Creater of all Humanity." I mean how cool is that? She also said that "We don't want to be co-workers with Jesus. We want to be co-stars." I just found so much truth in that. It's hard to work with Him and not want the fame and the glory for it. "The hero came 2,000 years ago."
"Promotion comes from God. If you're assigned, He will find you."
"This is a calling, not a career."
"A servant, not one who is served."
Just so much she said hit me so hard. There are so many days where I ask God, what is my reason? Why am I working with these kids? It is so easy for me to feel like I am getting nowhere with them. That I am not accomplishing what I want to do. But hearing Christine speak about how our God puts us in places to learn skills for other places, and that HE KNOWS WHERE WE ARE. He knows where we're going. He isn't going to forget us. The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Just hearing her talk about being a servant was SO encouraging and just what I needed.
"We must decide to let our light shine."
And then this. This was my favorite. This has been written out on a paper and hung in my bedroom.
"Once you feel the pull of where you're going, you can't go back to where you've been."
I will never be able to leave my EFM kids. I will never go back to the feeling that God wasn't going to use me for something special. I will never be able to get them out of my mind. God has big plans.
So after that we went to family groups and while we were in family groups, they told us that afterwards we were actually going to do something special and they needed us to go completely QUIET to the arena when we released from our groups. That is the quietest I have ever heard a bunch of college kids. Everyone was silent walking across the street. Silent entering the building. Silent sitting down. And then they began to play a video. Basically, they asked us to remain quiet in order to remind us that there are still countries around the world that don't allow Christianity. This video was about a boy who was able to go with his dad to a Christian meeting. The boy was amazed to see Bibles and 17 other Christians.
17. And yet here we are, a group of 15,000+ singing and praising and worshipping at the top of our lungs while these people in another country have to be completely silent, sneaking around, in order to praise God. It was crazy. And then they asked us, one community group at a time, to pray for one group of unreached people who have never heard the gospel. We were able to raise a crazy amount of money for this company that sends missionaries to these unreached people groups. God is doing big things in His world. After praying for each group, the different singers came on stage (including David Crowder, Kristian Stanfill, Matt Redman etc) came up and each led one of their big hit Christian songs. But it was so good. So sweet. Such an awesome time of worship. Bless the Lord Oh my Soul was one we sang and it was so so good. What an amazing night.
So then we went back to Taylor's aunt's. I once again slept like a rock. And it once again felt like 20 minutes. Then we headed back to downtown. We had one last community group. I had a great family group. Then we went in for our last session. Louie Giglio taught this one too. He ended the weekend by talking about the fact that "Satan is finished. But some things are just beginning." It was truly an awesome weekend.
We headed back to Taylor's aunts to pack everything up. We didn't leave there until early afternoon, and then stopped by Subway to grab some late lunch. It was like 3 when we finally ate. And then we said goodbye to the boys, who were headed back to Clemson and Anderson and we made our way onto I-20.
Finally arrived in Columbia around 8. Got in my car and drove home and fell asleep in my bed and slept for a very long time. It was very very nice. Also, can I say that I successfully drove to and from Columbia BY MYSELF FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER. Getting prepared for next year. And on the way home I got from Greene Street to I-20 without my GPS. I was excited about that.
All in all, it was an absolutely amazing encouraging awesome weekend. I am already looking forward to next years. I texted some of my friends over the weekend telling them that they HAVE to go next year. I can't explain how amazing it feels to be worshipping and praising God with so many Christians who believe the same things you do and who are there because they want to be there.
Passion 2015. Check.
Thanks for reading. Hope you were encouraged by this. Only finished this and posting this because Hailey asked me this morning when I was going to post a blog. Also, Abbey wanted to be mentioned so Abbey this is for you.
January 16th-18th I had one of the most encouraging weekends of my 17 year old life. It's an event called Passion. In a nutshell, Passion is a weekend long Christian conference, put on for college students, high school seniors (that's me!) and their leaders. There are 6 "sessions" where people come and speak, BIG people in the Christian speaker world. Before each session there is some major amazing worship going on by popular Christian artists including Chris Tomlin, David Crowder Band, Kristian Stanfill and more. There are also community groups/family groups.
It was amazing. And I should mention that when I say Christian conference, I mean it was in Atlanta in the Phillip's Arena with around 15,000 people.
Two years ago a group from First Pres went and when they came home and talked about how absolutely awesome it was I knew I wanted to go the first chance I could.
Which is this year. So I bought my ticket in November and have been not so patiently waiting. I mean, I did have a lot going on, but well. Anyways.
I was nervous. I mean, I am one of the youngest ones in my grade anyways, and so going to be with a bunch of college students? I knew it would end up being a good experience but it still kinda freaked me out. But nevertheless, I made plans to go with some First Pres college kids (Taylor, Matt, and David) and our fearless First Pres youth leader Taiter.
And so I headed out Friday afternoon bound for Columbia to get Taylor, and then on to Atlanta. Well if you wanna be real, Taylor actually drove from Columbia to Atlanta so I guess technically we (as in Taiter and I) didn't get her but well you get the picture.
Taylor's sweet aunt and her family opened their home to us. They live right outside of ATL. It was an easy drive into the city to the arena. So we had free accommodations. And such sweet accommodations. I LOVED their house, it was just so cute.
So anyways, back to Friday.. Taiter, Taylor, and I arrived at her aunt's around 4:30. Matt and David were coming from Clemson (Matt goes to Anderson but he had to get David.) and they were running late. We ate a quick bite and then took the MARTA (did I say that right? "the" MARTA, or is it just MARTA?) to the Arena. Checked in, got my wristband and ID and we found some seats. David and Matt managed to make it in JUST as Kristian Stanfill started the first song. In case you don't know this about me, I love love love me so Kristian Stanfill. He sang at FiTS (our summer weeklong conference our church attends) my Freshman year and I have been listening to his music since. As soon as the first song started I knew it was bound to be a good experience.
 |
| Nice shadow Matt. |
The first session was led by Louie Giglio who is the pastor at Passion City Church and one of the few main people who founded and lead Passion. After some powerful music, Louie started straight off beginning with, "It is finished." Interesting thing to start with, right?
The notes I wrote down include the following:
"Self is finished."
"Christians should be excited because WE ARE NOT DEAD."
"When Jesus died, we came to life. And without that, we have no songs to sing and no purpose to be here."
And afterward Louie finished, and we did some more worshipping, we went to community groups. I was very nervous about community groups. Basically, it's a way for this huge gathering of so many people to get personal. Every person received a wrist band that was either blue, orange, green, yellow, purple, and red. All 5 of us from First Pres had a different color. This was going way out of my comfort zone, forcing me to find new friends, and I'm happy to say that it was WAY better than I expected. First of all, it turned out that the majority of those in the blue group were high school seniors. While there were college kids, they split us up so I really only had interaction in community groups with people my age. This was a huge relief to me. And God provided for me big time. In the big session with everyone, there were two girls sitting in front of me who also had blue wrist bands. They turned around and we talked for a couple minutes and they were kind enough to let me walk with them to our community group (all the groups were in huge ballrooms across the street from the arena). When we made it in there we realized just how big the Blue community group was (around 3,000 people). We went up closer to the front and sat down on one of the hundreds of carpet squares. You see, we had cold concrete floors so the gave us huge 8 foot by 8 foot carpet squares. Once all 3,000 of us were in there, our community group leader came on stage and said that we were about to find our family groups for the weekend. First he split us up into high school seniors and college kids, high schooler seniors on one side of the room and college kids on the other. Then he asked us to find someone of the same gender with the same birth month as me. Luckily one of the girls who I had walked over with was born in July, so we linked arms like we were supposed to and sat down. Then we had to find a pair of the opposite gender with the same birth month as us. We turned around, yelled July, and two boys were right there. Then as a group of four, we were told to turn around and find the closest group of four and sit down with them. So we did. And somehow we ended up with an extra person so we had a family group of nine and it was honestly some of the best time of my weekend. I really became close to those 8, even though we were only together for less than five hours of the weekend.
 |
| Family Group! |
After family groups, I met back up with the First Pres crew and we found seats for the FOUR sessions of the main day. It was a lot of stuff. But I really did enjoy it.
The speaker of our second session was John Piper. If you're unfamiliar with him, he is an amazing Christian.. trying to find the right word.. theologian maybe? He is BRILLIANT. A lot of what He said is really really deep but so so good. I think the thing that really stuck out to me from when he spoke was one particular quote: "Christianity is the only movement that was created by, and is sustained by its news.". If you take the time to analyze that, it's totally understandable. The news is the gospel. Christianity was created by the gospel. It is sustained by the gospel. I really enjoyed John Piper.
 |
| Love these 3. |
The fourth session was led by LECRAE. It was so neat. I have been to a concert of his and have been listening to his music for years. But hearing him give a talk was really cool. He talked about giving God glory. His analogies were awesome too. He used one where he talked about going to Beverly Hills and walking into just a store and trying to find a plain white cotton shirt. The only ones he could find were $600. He asked the employee of the store why a plain white cotton shirt would be so expensive. The reply? "Because it has the designer's name on it.". In the same way, Christians are valuable because God's name is on us. He did an awesome job.
So after Lecrae we had a break for a few hours. We headed down the street to find somewhere to eat. Along with all 15,000 of our friends. We ended up finding a cute mexican/brazilian restaurant and I had a really delicious quesadilla. Actually I really wish I had another one right now. It was really good.
 |
| An accurate picture. |
Wow.
I really really really really enjoyed hearing her speak. She was easily my favorite speaker of the weekend. I think because what she talked about just resonated so much with what was on my heart.
She really spoke about how we are to serve others while on earth. I really appreciated that she first discussed that we can't receive salvation through works, but through believing in Jesus alone. I took so many notes and I really just want to share a lot of them so I am. "This is not a game on earth. This is the fight for the souls of humanity." Isn't that deep?? She then spoke about the story of how Elijah found Elisha, which is told in 1 Kings 19. Elisha was plowing a field behind a team of 12 oxen. That was gross stinky work. "Put your plow to the ground and start plowing now." She brought up 1 Corinthians 15:58 which says that "in the Lord your labor is never in vain." "If you don't plow, what is your purpose as a Christian?" As in if you're a Christian and you're not working of the glory of God, what are you doing?
I think the biggest thing I liked that she spoke about was her talking about "If you don't spend years growing your muscles for plowing, you will not make it." Sometimes I am so tired after spending Tuesdays with my kids. I want to give up. I get worn out. But I am building strength in order that one day I can use the skills that I have learned to do bigger things. I know I am where I am supposed to be right now.
I also liked that she said "We get to co-work with the Creater of all Humanity." I mean how cool is that? She also said that "We don't want to be co-workers with Jesus. We want to be co-stars." I just found so much truth in that. It's hard to work with Him and not want the fame and the glory for it. "The hero came 2,000 years ago."
"Promotion comes from God. If you're assigned, He will find you."
"This is a calling, not a career."
"A servant, not one who is served."
Just so much she said hit me so hard. There are so many days where I ask God, what is my reason? Why am I working with these kids? It is so easy for me to feel like I am getting nowhere with them. That I am not accomplishing what I want to do. But hearing Christine speak about how our God puts us in places to learn skills for other places, and that HE KNOWS WHERE WE ARE. He knows where we're going. He isn't going to forget us. The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Just hearing her talk about being a servant was SO encouraging and just what I needed.
"We must decide to let our light shine."
And then this. This was my favorite. This has been written out on a paper and hung in my bedroom.
"Once you feel the pull of where you're going, you can't go back to where you've been."
I will never be able to leave my EFM kids. I will never go back to the feeling that God wasn't going to use me for something special. I will never be able to get them out of my mind. God has big plans.
So after that we went to family groups and while we were in family groups, they told us that afterwards we were actually going to do something special and they needed us to go completely QUIET to the arena when we released from our groups. That is the quietest I have ever heard a bunch of college kids. Everyone was silent walking across the street. Silent entering the building. Silent sitting down. And then they began to play a video. Basically, they asked us to remain quiet in order to remind us that there are still countries around the world that don't allow Christianity. This video was about a boy who was able to go with his dad to a Christian meeting. The boy was amazed to see Bibles and 17 other Christians.
17. And yet here we are, a group of 15,000+ singing and praising and worshipping at the top of our lungs while these people in another country have to be completely silent, sneaking around, in order to praise God. It was crazy. And then they asked us, one community group at a time, to pray for one group of unreached people who have never heard the gospel. We were able to raise a crazy amount of money for this company that sends missionaries to these unreached people groups. God is doing big things in His world. After praying for each group, the different singers came on stage (including David Crowder, Kristian Stanfill, Matt Redman etc) came up and each led one of their big hit Christian songs. But it was so good. So sweet. Such an awesome time of worship. Bless the Lord Oh my Soul was one we sang and it was so so good. What an amazing night.
 |
| This is just a quality picture. |
We headed back to Taylor's aunts to pack everything up. We didn't leave there until early afternoon, and then stopped by Subway to grab some late lunch. It was like 3 when we finally ate. And then we said goodbye to the boys, who were headed back to Clemson and Anderson and we made our way onto I-20.
 |
| The girls. |
Finally arrived in Columbia around 8. Got in my car and drove home and fell asleep in my bed and slept for a very long time. It was very very nice. Also, can I say that I successfully drove to and from Columbia BY MYSELF FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER. Getting prepared for next year. And on the way home I got from Greene Street to I-20 without my GPS. I was excited about that.
All in all, it was an absolutely amazing encouraging awesome weekend. I am already looking forward to next years. I texted some of my friends over the weekend telling them that they HAVE to go next year. I can't explain how amazing it feels to be worshipping and praising God with so many Christians who believe the same things you do and who are there because they want to be there.
Passion 2015. Check.
Thanks for reading. Hope you were encouraged by this. Only finished this and posting this because Hailey asked me this morning when I was going to post a blog. Also, Abbey wanted to be mentioned so Abbey this is for you.
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