So what now?

I've just come home from Hillsong conference, and of course it was just amazing. :) Five days of full on, focused worship, learning, and prayer. Five days of listening to God - it's amazing what you hear when you're really focused on listening! Five days of imagining the possibilities of what God could do in one person's life. Five days of stirring up faith to believe for impossible dreams to come to pass.

But now I'm home, back in the same environment I came from, back to the same routine.

I'd like to think that despite being plonked back into the same circumstances as before, I've changed. It's every Christian's dream (I think ;)) that a conference, a camp, or an experience, could miraculously change us from the inside out. But the fact is, I've not changed. My understanding has been challenged, I've been exposed to something greater, but until I prove that my knowledge has become reality by living it out, it will remain a nice experience that I reminisce about, or worse still, just something I talk about and (therefore) think I live out.

Paul encourages us that each one of you show the same diligence to the full assurance of hope until the end, that you do not become sluggish, but imitate those who through faith and patience inherit the promises (Heb 6:11-12)

Right at this very moment, it feels very enticing to 'become sluggish', to sit with my blankets and a nice hot cup of milo in front of the TV or with a book, on this very cold winter's night. Yet my very own words are ringing in my ears - we can't expect change if we don't do anything different. So it makes sense to me that if I just went back to my same old routine, nothing would change; no, not even with all those amazing sermons I've listened to. Not that there was anything really wrong with my lifestyle before, but God calls us to keep growing. And particularly at this point when revelation is fresh in my mind, I cannot afford to forget or to lose momentum.

Do you remember the old parable about the foolish man who built his house upon the sand and the wise man who build his house upon the rock? It's even a sunday school song. I never realised what the parable was really about until I came across Luke 6:46-49 again. The wise man is whoever comes to Jesus and hears His sayings and does them (see verse 47)! Whereas the foolish man was the one who heard and did nothing (verse 49). From this parable, we have a very vivid picture of the necessity of strengthening our faith by action so that it can withstand the storms of life.

I love conferences like Hillsong, because every now and then we need that boost of faith and that special touch from God to recharge us if we're weary, refocus our vision if we're lost, and enlarge our thinking. If we stay in the same environments we've always been in, we'd never see the different things God is doing in this world. Yet for all that, it would just remain a conference if we don't do anything about it. And I don't intend for that to happen.

The biggest fight is now, when the conference is over, the crowds gone, the band silent. Seems like we're back to square one - but there is a difference. We've tasted and we've seen a life worth living - one of total abandonment to God's cause. Will we fight to make that a daily reality?