Ok so now that I have gotten 16 hours of sleep and some real food in my system I can actually start to wrap my head around what happened this week in Atlanta. First and foremost God was glorified by 44K college aged students and staff. That’s about the size of every student who attends UCF. Worship was absolutely amazing. What a powerful experience to be with that many people all praising the name of Jesus. And the things we said were strong statements; “I lay me down, I’m not my own, I belong to you alone.” I praised with such abandon. There really aren’t words to express the presence of God in that building. God’s hand was all over that town this week.
We also raised money to donate to various organizations to help fight slavery. There are 27 million people enslaved today and are victims of human trafficking. The reality of those faces that support those numbers hit me this week. Not only are peoples freedom taken away from them but they are forced into such a state of hopelessness it’s heartbreaking. Throughout the week we heard stories from former slaves. It became so real to me. The thought that someone could treat another human being like property with no regard to their life or their well being wrecked me. Needless to say, I was a blubbering mess. But the good thing is that we set a goal to raise 1 million dollars that week at Passion. We surpassed that the second day of the conference. We ended up donating $3,066,670 to end slavery. 100k of that money went back to the city of Atlanta to form a special victims unit and a special task force dedicated to investigating, stopping and preventing human trafficking in Passion’s home town. We donated 36K towels/156K pairs socks for homeless of Atlanta. The fact that all of this came from broke college student astounds me. God’s people are a giving population and it was good to see that come through. People spend years trying to raise 3 million dollars. We did it in 3 days. God is too good.
There were great speakers and I think I’m going to address the goodness of that in another post. But I would like you all to know that you can do something to help end slavery. If you visit www.slaveryfootprint.org you can take the survey, see how many slaves are working for you and take steps to adjust the products in your life that are made by slaves. I know I’m not called to go to India and conduct raids with the police, but I can do this. I can make a conscience decision to live a slave free life. So just like we all are conscious about our green footprint, let’s do this in the same way. End Slavery Today.
Post Twenty-five Life 