Hillsong Conference '06

Well what can I say, after living in HK and hearing people raving about Hillsong conferences and feeling ashamed that after 5 years of living in Sydney I've never been... until yesterday that is. In the words of Matty, JEEPERS is the word for the occasion, I knew that hillsong knew how to throw a party but this is just going to a new level, 20,000 people packed into a basketball stadium all praising god, some have come from other countries, some from other australian cities, some from their and then there's me who decided that I would actually go about 2 hours before the session started!

The worship was good yet not great, it was half hillsong and half of some guy called Israel Houghton and his band, they we're freakin tight except, my section of the crowd were behind the actual stage and they forgot to put the words up on our screen but they did for every other screen so that kinda sucked but I just decided to make up my own words, so all in all not a total disaster!

Although during the worship I found myself really exited about the talk, I was wishing that the most famous Australian worship band would just get off the stage so we could open up the word of god and get down to business!

And what a talk it was! Some chick called Charlotte Scanlon-Gambill whose dad is really famous or something got up and talked about how we should be loving the Ishmaels of this world, yeah I know it sounds weird to begin with but stick with it... basically, Abraham and Sarah tried to force gods plan by having a child through Hagar, although this wasn't gods plan he tried to work with it but hagar pretty much rejected him, Sarah rejected him, he was being rejected by everyone yet god still loves him and the question was do we focus on what Isaac is doing in our life and forget about what ishmael is doing?? do we focus on the big things that god is doing in our life but forget the little people, she gave the example of her leaving her house to go to this huge women's convention that she had organised when her neighbor called out to her and started to talk to her about how her marriage was falling apart, there she was looking at her watch thinking I've really got to go and get to this conference, while this unsaved woman was reaching out to her, she realised this then got her in the car to come along with her.

She told the story of a team she was leading at her church in the UK preparing hampers for kids on the street last christmas (not the crappy type of hampers with jam and that useless stuff, real stuff like kettles cd's etc) they purposefully didn't try to preach to these people about god, they just wanted to bless them. One guy called James got one, he was a drug addict, dealer and had been in court and faced 49 different charges in his short life, he didn't know why they had done this, so he went to the church one sunday, he sat up the back like a bit of an ishmael but that morning he became a Christian, a couple months later Charlotte got a letter from him saying thank you so much for everything, how his life was back on track now, he had a place to live now cause a family at the church had taken him in and how he was starting to realise that he could do big things in his life too. When asked what his dream was he said he didn't really have one, then he thought about his new love for god and his love for outdoor activities (kayaking etc) so now he wants to start a program taking kids like he used to be out adventuring and talking to them about Jesus. He said in the letter, I know it's gonna be hard cause I'll have to get some qualifications and a lot of funding etc but I believe that through god we can do it! It took James a month to write that letter cause when he started it he couldn't read or write! He still had one charge to face, drink driving where he seriously injured another girl. Before the trial he said, I wanna do that thing where you dunk me under water! So they baptised him in a bathtub! At the trial the judge read out a statement saying "we do not recognise this man. This is not the same man who committed the crime. All we know is that he started attending Abundant Life Church and now he is a changed man." They dropped the charges!

Love the Ishmaels people, who knows what will happen if we do...