The first miracle of the trip was that we got there at all. Money and time were tight, so we decided to cut our schedule as close as possible by taking a bus leaving Kimberley Hall at 6:40pm on Friday night and arriving in Midrand, Johannesburg just 50 minutes before the conference was due to start on the morning of Saturday 9 August. The bus was only slightly late, so we got into the conference hall at Gallagher Estate just as it was about to start. And the bus trips there and back were the zaniest I've ever had. Just look at these photos if you think I'm kidding:
The conference was just one of seventeen stops on a world tour organised to give university students from Tokyo to Sao Paulo a chance to catch the vision of making their lives count for God's name and renown. It's an offshoot of the events held every year in the USA, which a few Rhodes students past and present have been blessed to attend. So you can imagine how excited we were, filing into the massive hall to take our seats behind 6 000 other students who'd come with hearts keyed up to meet with God. Later on, Louie Giglio, the conference's speaker, joked that the crowd stretched all the way to Pretoria, and that's how long the distance to the stage seemed to us.
Of course, we took full advantage of sitting in the sparsely populated white plastic chairs at the back of the hall. There was space for us to worship any way God led us: sitting down, standing, jumping, chair-surfing or kneeling. Chris Tomlin and Fee rocked the hall alive with songs like "How Great is our God", "Hosanna", "Let God Arise", "God of this City", "We Shine" and "Amazing Grace".
In the conference's first session, Louie quoted 2 Corinthians 5:13: "If we are out of our mind, it is for the sake of God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you." He said that if we've experienced the wonder of what God did for us on the cross, it should overwhelm us to the point that we just want to go crazy about it at times. But at other times, we have to keep our cool and remain sane so that we can relate to the people we minister to, and help them to meet Jesus too, so they can go crazy for him! I loved the way he put that.
Later, Louie told the story of a student called Ashley who was a complete heathen, far from believing in Jesus. It so happened that she got a Christian digsmate for her last term at university, and she thought this girl was so crazy that she nicknamed her "Fruitcake". Anyway, Fruitcake helped her through a couple of crises just by being a friend and not judging her, and eventually got a chance to show her some DVDs of Louie's talks. Through the help of Fruitcake and Louie's talks, Ashley discovered grace and gave her life to Christ!
I won't spoil the end of the story for you, just in case you ever get a chance to hear it yourself (it's on Louie's DVD entitled "Hope", apparently), but the story reminded me just how simple it can be to make your life count for God's glory. All it takes is a heart that's totally in love with Jesus and is willing to pass on his love to others.
The story also reminded me how incredible our salvation is. Before Louie told Ashley's story, I was enjoying the times of worship through music, but still felt a stupid desire to be noticed, to get some more credit for having come all the way from Grahamstown for this thing. But after I heard the first part of the story in the afternoon, I was just so astonished at how God's grace can turn a life around (and has turned my life around) that all those proud thoughts faded into oblivion and no one could stop me from going absolutely ballistic in God's presence.
Passion Johannesburg gave me a total new perspective on my future. Before, it seemed cloudy and uncertain to me, because I'm not sure where I'll be next year or even if I'd enjoy doing Master's. Now, even though I have no more certainty about where to go, my heart is light and I'm full of excitement, because wherever I go, I can glorify the one who gave up everything for me. As one of the songs we sang goes, "Take my life and let it be all for you and for your glory." That's the only thing that matters.
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