This week my team and I are at the Hillsong Conference in Sydney. It has been an awesome opportunity getting to worship with so many people from other countries (we’ve already heard national anthems from Singapore, South Africa, Kenya and Thailand) and learning from incredibly influential Christ followers outside the American bubble.
Christian conferences like this can quickly become overwhelming (the good kind of overwhelming). It can be difficult to sort through all the sermon notes and thoughts racing through my head to figure out what the Lord is teaching me here specifically and how I’m going to move forward. Though it’s awesome to leave here simply feeling closer to God, the feelings from a camp or conference, as many of us have experienced, are temporary. It is so important we leave these gatherings with truths we can hold onto and move forward with.
Thankfully, Brian Houston, the senior pastor of Hillsong Church, recognized this issue and addressed it within the first ten minutes of the conference. Thank you, Lord! He gave us two questions to answer and I wanted to share them here because they have been incredibly helpful in giving me a focus for the rest of this week and summer. Here they are:
1. What do you want God to speak to you about this week?
2. What do I need Him to deliver me from in order to move forward with Him?
Simple and powerful. Answering these questions has helped me take every word and lyric here and apply them to these two answers. I am not attempting to limit the Lord’s voice, but I have begun to expect and look for His direction in these two specific areas.
Maybe you need to answer these too. It is easy to get caught up with asking God the wrong questions, and it’s so helpful to be specific in our prayers and seeking. We certainly don’t need mega Christian conferences to be transformed, just a desire.