Since 1997, Louie and Shelley Giglio of Passion have faithfully been hosting a yearly gathering for 18-25-year-olds to call them to ultimately live for what matters most. Jesus. For His name, and His renown.
I've been tuning into the Passion conferences via live stream since 2018, and every year there's something just so powerful about them. It's wonderful to see thousands of college students lifting up the name of Jesus in worship, and seeing them commit themselves to God. The conference takes place in Atlanta, Georgia at the beginning of every year, and even though I'm over 1,000 miles away from Atlanta, I can still feel the presence of God when I watch this conference. I can sense that he's moving in this generation.
Passion 2020 was no different. The conference wrapped up the morning of January 2, 2020, and it was absolutely incredible. It started on New Year's Eve with Hillsong UNITED ushering in the New Year singing "Good Grace," and ended with the Passion Band declaring that there is nothing that our God can't do.
This conference was hosted at the Mercedes Benz Stadium, and was the largest Christian conference event in the United States! Over 65,000 college students attended, which even caught the attention of Fox News.
We got to hear from eight speakers, and twelve Christian bands and artists. Nearly every speaker had a consistent theme throughout their message, that the Word of God is what will fill us and satisfy us. From Sadie Robertson's message about relationships and following Jesus, to Louie Giglio's message about God being able to turn a page in our lives into victory, all of them spoke of God's infinite power and majesty.
To top it all off, Passion brought a flame all the way from Jerusalem to Atlanta, Georgia to launch their new movement called Share Light. Passion partnered with every Bible translation organization to launch this movement, which will be bringing scripture into every single unreached people group in the world by 2033. Yes, you read that right. They're bringing the Word of God into every single language in our lifetime. They asked the students at Passion 2020 to donate to Share Light to make this dream a reality. Louie Giglio set a goal to raise one million dollars, and Passion well exceeded their goal and raised over 1.2 million dollars!
Matthew 24:14 says, "And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come." Based on this verse, Passion is striving to share the gospel to the whole world, because the sooner the whole world knows about Jesus, the sooner He'll come back.
I don't think I will ever be able to come up with enough words to express how incredible this conference was. Passion is literally changing the world. Seriously, God is using them to change the whole entire world. We're witnessing something that's bigger than ourselves. We're witnessing the spreading of the gospel. We're witnessing lives that are being changed. We're witnessing a group of people that was once known as the "selfie generation" turn into the Jesus generation. It's crazy to see this group of people step away from all the distractions, and step into God's presence and worship Him with everything they have. So many people found Jesus this week. God is doing something huge. This is the beginning of a new decade and the beginning of something revolutionary. This is the beginning of lives being forever changed.
Yes, there's a whole lot of evil in the world. But there's also a whole lot of good. This conference absolutely proved that. Where else have you seen 65,000 college students raise over 1 million dollars to bring the light of Jesus into every single people group? We can't miss what God is doing, because He is doing big things. This new decade is filled with so much possibility.
Registration for Passion 2021 is now open and will be January 1-2 in Atlanta, Georgia at the State Farm Arena, and in Brooklyn, New York at the Barclays Center. You can go to https://www.passion2021.com to register!
Grace Chaves is a fan of all things Christian music, and is one of NRT's youngest writers. She's homeschooled, and loves concerts, Jesus, and songwriting.
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