A night at Passion

This is a rather long overdue post, considering the event happened 2 weeks ago on Sunday, 3rd of August, but considering I've been pretty busy, you'll just have to deal with stale news. Bygones!

Couples of weeks ago I went for Passion World Tour 2008: Kuala Lumpur, held at the Sunway Convention Centre. For those of you wondering what da 'eck is this all about, the event is a worldwide Christian concert tour run by Passion Conferences, a Christian organization that runs annual Christian events targeted mainly at college students (or those who can still pass off as a college students such as yours truly). For their Passion World Tour 2008, they are visiting a total of 17 countries, Malaysia being one of them, and their tickets were pretty cheap at only RM20. At first I had read about the event on Facebook, but wasn't really planning on going for the concert... until a friend of mine asked me if I wanted to go, and I was "Um...eh...errr...okaaay...". Only Rm20 anyway... so I thought, what the hey, might as well go and check it out.

And as expected, the event WAS totally awesome! The entire convention centre was packed with about 4000 people (mostly college students and older foggies like me trying to pass off as college students). The concert started off with some cool visual effects, which you can see
here in the wonderful world of Youtube. Then the band started off with a bunch of upbeat Passion Christian songs, most of which I'd never heard before but learned how to sing along soon enough. And when you're singing worship songs along with about 4000 other people, jumping up and down like a bunch of bunnies high on caffeine coz' they're so ecstatically praising our God, trust me, there is no cooler feeling. UNLESS you're singing along with tens of thousands of other people from all over the world jumping up and down while praising God, like I was once when I was in Australia attending the Hillsong Conference in Sydney.... but that's another story! Oh yeah, Chris Tomlin (who is only like probably the most famous contemporary Christian artiste today) was leading the Passion band too. I've heard a bunch of his songs before, but didn't really know what he looked like, and of course it was my first time seeing him live. Fantastic singer, singing some fantastic songs, and not too bad on the eyes too. All the elements needed for a great concert... :P

But the music wasn't all that was to it... after about 6 or 7 songs and everyone had had enough of jumping around, we got to have a seat and listen to a message from Louie Giglio, who's the founder of Passion Conferences. While his message overall was really good, the part that really got everyone was when he pulled out a journal and opened it to read to everyone. He explained that the journal belonged to a young girl named Ashley who was a senior at the University of Florida. As he read out loud and explained the first part of Ashley's journal, which consisted of quite a few swear words that Louie had to 'edit' out, it revealed the story of a typical party girl who enjoyed nights out getting drunk silly and getting it on with her boyfriend. Ashley's mum was a Christian who kept talking to her about God and Jesus and stuff like that, but to Ashley, her mother behaved as though she was better than non-Christians. And in fact, all the Christians she knew behaved as though they were better than non-Christians... so Ashley wasn't too fond of Christians, and thought that considering her partying lifestyle, she was too far gone, too 'sinful' to ever be accepted by this God dude her mum kept talking about.

Then one day, Ashley has a big fight with her boyfriend whom she was living with. She kicked him out of her apartment, but didn't like living alone and started advertising for a housemate. A girl named Christa took her up on the offer, and after she moved in, Ashley found out that Christa was one of those Christian people. Ugh. But she soon learned that Christa was...different. She didn't act like she was better than Ashley, and she didn't look down on Ashley for her partying lifestyle. Christa started talking to Ashley about Jesus, and though at first Ashley at first had her inhibitions, when Christa started showing her DVD's of some Passion Conferences and she listened to Louie Giglio's messages, she started to have a change of heart. After getting through the awe that Christians actually record church messages on DVD, she learned from Louie's messages that no one is too 'far gone' to be accepted by God... and God would love and accept her even after all her 'sinful' partying ways. Ashley was intrigued by this, and wanting to learn more, she started writing letters to Louie Giglio himself. She didn't expect to get a personal reply from him, but he did reply, and they exchanged a few emails online but never actually met.

Eventually, Ashley decide to accept Christ and become a Christian, and her journal entries from then on were very different from before as she talked about how great God was and all. In one entry, she talked about how she when to a Christian cell group, and they sang one song which she didn't know, but the lyrics of the song just hit her so hard and she loved it so much, she wrote down the lyrics of the song in her journal. The song was called 'Mighty to Save', and these are the lyrics she wrote:

Everyone needs compassion
A love that's never failing
Let mercy fall on me
Everyone needs forgiveness
The kindness of a Savior
The hope of nations

My Savior
He can move the mountains
My God is Mighty to save
He is Mighty to save
Forever
Author of salvation
He rose and conquered the grave
Jesus conquered the grave

At this point, Louie lifted up the journal and showed everyone that the last few pages were blank. Ashley had wrote a little more after that about how excited she was about graduation which was coming soon... but she never finished the pages in that journal and she never made it to graduation because soon after, she got into a bad car accident and died of internal bleeding at the hospital. That was 3 months after she accepted Christ, and after Ashley was buried, her mother wrote a letter to Louie telling him what had happened to her. But even though she had died tragically, her mum told him that in the last few months of her life, she was a completely different, joyful person. And to thank Louie for his encouragement to Ashley, her mother and father sent Ashley's journal to Louie, allowing him to use it to tell her story to people around the world, as he was doing that night at the Passion concert. The Passion blog also tells a bit more about Ashley's story, as it shows the letter that she wrote to Louie and also the letter that her mum sent to him after Ashley died.

Of course, not many stories of people believing in Christ are as dramatic as Ashley's. Especially for people like me who came from a sort-of Christian family, where I known about Jesus all my life. Sure, at one point when I was older, I had to make one my own informed decision on whether to really believe in Him or not, and I chose the former, albeit with a few ups and down along the way. Sure, I've experienced the joy of being a believer and knowing no matter how crappy a person I am, God has taken care of it so I don't have to worry about anything. But naturally, being a normal human being, it's hard to remember that fact all the time, and it's easy to live a normal every day life and be... not so joyful. And I guess that's why it's good to go for concerts/ conferences like Passion coz' events like these give me the whack on the head I need to remind me of what God has done for me, and for all of US, and it gives me the chance to go crazy happy about it. We got that chance again after Louie's message, when the band got to playing more songs, including the wonderful 'Mighty to Save'. And everyone was singing, lifting their hands and jumping around even higher than before, which was all totally great fun. :)

Here are a couple of vids of the concert that I stole from Youtube to give you a rather foggy idea of how the concert was. First vid is of the song 'Mighty to Save' and the second vid is of them playing the song 'Sing, Sing, Sing', where you can see the good lookin' Chris Tomlin and sort of see part of the 4000 people there jumping like bunny wabbits throughout the song.





Unfortunately, the quality of the videos aren't great so you just need to imagine a much better sound quality and having 4000 other people singing around you to really enjoy the vids. OR you could go to the Passion concert next year to enjoy the REAL experience, or whenever they decide to come back, which hopefully will be next year coz' I want to go agaaaiiiinn.....!!!