Oxygen Conference

We spent from Saturday till Thursday in Sydney with 3 other guys from church. Our main reason was to attend the Oxygen conference where John Piper and John Lennox were the main speakers. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday during the day 2000+ people met in Redfern at Technology Park for talks and electives. On Wednesday night 10,000 people gathered at the entertainment centre for the "One Night".

I don't have any pictures yet. I forgot my camera and my phone isn't fancy enough to do decent photos. I have done a bit of googling to find pictures of the places we went.

We were billeted by some of the ministry team at St Pauls, Chatswood. Follow this link to find Sunday's sermon (It is not up yet but it should be any day now). I highly recommend it, but a word of warning: it stings!

Technology Park

It's hard to know where to start. The last week has been full of amazing lessons and by 11.59pm Wednesday I though my brain would explode. Steve Jeffrey's sermon on Sunday was something I've needed to hear for a while. Judgementalism in one's heart just continues to grow like a malignant cancer, and even when you try to deal with it, very little seems to change. I'm starting to realise how pervasive it is and how much it affects one's attitude. To manifest and grow, judgementalism relies on selfish ambition and vanity. I have come to realise the judgemental thoughts I have about people only serve to temporarily make me feel better about myself. It comes with a cost: if I don't deal with judgemental thoughts when they come, my attitude towards the person/people gets effected, sometimes to the point where it's almost impossible to think well of the person. From there flows gossip and slander. Right now I'm at the point where I can see I really need to change but I feel as though I'm too far gone. My short term goal is take it one day at a time with God's grace.

The main sentence I took away from Piper's talks was "God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him".

Something Lennox emphasised was if we truly believe the next world is as real as it is, we'd be preparing for it.

I feel very challenged to not waste my life and to desire God more.