We just returned from Passion 07 late Thursday.

It lived up to and probably exceeded all of my expectations, and I think main reason is that Louie and everyone else puts so much emphasis on keeping Christ the main thing and not the bands or the speakers.

Beth Moore spoke to me more than anyone else this time around. She centered her talk on humility. She said that the greatest burden we bear is the weight of our own ego, which I know is true for me.


A few lines that really stuck out are:

"Learn humility early"

"Pride will blow your entire calling"

"You have no greater burden than the weight of your own ego"

"We will never develop in our area of giftedness with pride in the way"

"Humility is an unnatural quality that requires our pursuit"

"Humility is a powerful shield against unnecessary peril"

"Humility is the ultimate invitation for God to fight for you."


The key work for the conference was 'shine', from Philipians 2, where it says that we shine like lights in the world when Jesus is in us. Matt Redman put some newer words on it in his new song "shine":

we have seen the rising sun
awakening the early dawn
and we're rising up to give You praise
we have seen the stars and moon
see how they shine
they shine for You
and You're calling us to do the same
so we rise up with a song
and we rise up with a cry
and we're giving You our lives...

and we will shine like stars in the universe
holding out Your Truth in the darkest place we'll be living for Your glory...
and we will burn so bright with Your praise o God
and declare Your light to this broken world we'll be living for Your glory...

(then the bridge -- think hard on this)
like the sun so radiantly shining light for all to see
let Your holy church arise
exploding into life
like a supernova's light
set Your holy church on fire...
Jesus we will shine

I cannot stop singing and thinking about that song, and our trip to the conference really helped reel it into my head.
The Passion website says that there won't be a CD or DVD released for the conference this year. They're focusing their time and energy on going global! But that's actually really good news, because they're going to slowly release the new material over iTunes over the next couple of months, and we'll all get it a lot sooner that way (yay)!

Be on the lookout y'all... you don't want to miss what Mr. Piper or what Francis Chan had to say!

I'm sure there's more to come, but I still haven't pick the pics from the Christmas Eve program on the church website, so in the meantime: SHINE!

(go see more pics at http://photos.zackweb.net :0)

Labels: god, music, photography, piper, worship