This year started off in fantastic form due largely to our attendance at the Passion Conference in Atlanta the first few days of January. It was our second year to attend, thanks to our dear friend Sarah Ott, (last year’s recap post here), and just like last year, it was such a gift to experience God in that unique environment–amazing!
The full Georgia Dome was opened up and around 67,000 worshiped the Lord together. It was something to behold. The music was phenomenal, the teaching was exceptional, and the overall message of “freedom for the captives” resonated more deeply than ever. Passion has even spawned a separate campaign called the “End It Movement” with the sole purpose of bringing awareness to the fact that in the world today 27 million people are in some form of slavery, whether sex trafficking or indentured servitude.
It would take too long and words would not suffice to describe the teaching and the music, the sights and the sounds. Instead, I will leave you with a picture. As a lead-in to one of the sessions, a video was shown of a young girl who this time last year was enslaved in a brothel in East Asia, literally while we were all at Passion 2012. The funds raised last year at Passion to aid organizations ending slavery included an organization that ended up liberating this girl last fall! At the end of the video, the girl was introduced in person. There was not a dry eye in the house. To juxtapose where this girl had been and where her life seemed destined a year ago to where she was now and where her life is headed was humbling and joyous.
That night, at the start of the next session, we looked over as the same girl from the video sat down next to us with her translator. Tears welled up in our eyes as we witnessed the beautiful young women set free into new life–a life that by all accounts should have never been hers to live anew. Naturally, the picture of her and Katherine sitting side by side lifting their hands in praise to the Lord was one of the more breath-taking pictures of freedom that I have ever witnessed.
As people who have been freed to new life in Christ, the plight of those in physical enslavement demands our attention and our action. Check out www.enditmovement.com to learn more.
