Passion Tour/2012

Passion 2012

A Generation United

                 After following an organization called Hagar International for a few years and watching God instill in my heart a zealous desire for the freedom of modern day slaves it is a blessing and a joy to see that the Passion 2012 Tour has chosen modern day slavery as their Do Something Now campaign. Right now over 30,000 young adults are gathered together singing, praying, giving, teaching, learning about these incredibly painful and nearly unbelievable truths of the sin going on in our world and are being filled with the Spirit to go out and make a difference in this broken and messed up world.

                 I linked the Passion website in the title where you can go and follow what is being taught, sung, and revealed through the topics, speakers, and worship leaders at Passion and also watch how students worldwide are being awakened to the truth of modern day slavery and moved to Do Something Now.

               It is so incredibly hard for me some days, even in my own life,  to really believe that faith in hope is enough to get us through the disgust and pain of our human sin. It is hard to think that the God who created us and loves us each individually would allow these things to happen, would allow us to drift so far away from his heart and hurt him the way that we do. It is hard to realize that the very reasons that he does allow it, is because he loves us. As much as he hurts, he wants us to chose. He wants to see us chose Him amidst all the other fleeting desires of our selfish hearts.

             What I want to learn and focus on is not the darkness, not the pain, anger, disgust, hurt...but the light, the truth, freedom, wholeness, unity. In my own life I want to stop focusing on the things I do wrong and how many times a day I mess up and instead focus on the light that I have within me through God. When I focus on the truth that my heart and mind and spirit withhold, I am able to give it away freely to those who desperately need to know what I have. They don't need my guilt, my shame, my anger, my hurt, my pain...they need my hope, my faith, my trust, my love. Because that reveals to their darkened hearts their desperate need for the light of Christ in their lives. This Christmas at the same Christmas Eve service I have attended for nearly 20 years was the first time that I saw and felt and understood all at the same time what the LIGHT of Christ means for me, and what it means for the world. 'Our God is an ALL consuming FIRE.' Hebrews 12:29 He lives to consume our entire beings, not only by showing us our darkness, but by taking that darkness away and filling us with overflowing LIGHT. That is who he is. That is grace.

           I want to give more. I want to be faithful in my work and in my savings so I can give more to those around me who need the love of Christ and sometimes only through finances. I want to be faithful in my studies and in my responsibilities so I can give my time to those around me who need to be heard, who need to be encouraged, who need to be lifted up. 

        Lord teach me what it means to love light and to walk each day by faith and faith in you alone. I know those lessons only come through the storms and through the struggles, so teach me how to be thankful for them and to give them to you in the desire to learn and be humbled through them. Help me pray until I believe.

"You will never learn faith in comfortable surroundings. God gives us the promises in a quiet hour; God seals our covenants with great and gracious words, then He steps back and waits to see how much we believe; then He lets the tempter come, and the test seems to contradict all that He has spoken. It is then that faith wins its crown. That is the time to look up through the storm, and among the trembling, frightened seamen cry, “I believe God that it shall be even as it was told me." 

-Streams in the Desert

 My heart and my flesh may fail, but God you are

the strength of my heart and my sufficiency forever.

Psalm 73:26


CNN coverage over Passion 2012 Tour:
 http://hagarusa.org/passion-2012-restores-broken-lives/