Many of you will have noticed that once TwitPic woke up on Saturday (it prorably heard me whinging), we totally hijacked it and posted a Twitpicathon of our Afternoon in Sydney. ‘Course, most of our days are in Sydney, but we’ve not really been out much in the last few weeks with Diane working hard on creative elements for our church visuals, and last weekend was the conference I’ve referenced in nearly every post since. You’ll note I resisted the temptation to link it this time…

There was a time (pre-social networking, but more importantly, pre involvement in the creative non-music elements of church) when we’d go for a big drive in the beautiful mountains or coast surrounding Sydney. You see, not only do we have the amazing harbour and all the beauty which has built up around it, the whole Sydney basin is surrounded by stunning scenery to suit most tastes. God’s creativity just never fails to leave me breathless.

The day began with Diane catching up on sleep while I caught up on blog reading. I should have taken pics of the lovely birds which joined me on our balcony, but I couldn’t be bothered getting up to get either my phone or my camera. I’ll try and remember to do that sometime – the joy of Australian native birds mixed with Indian miners is without peer.

We then headed out to return a redundant cable thingy I’d bought for the MacBook Pro, choose a baby shower gift (see the “Twitter as shopping aide” pic in the slifeshow, and we went with the one of the right…as chosen by Tweeps) and then just enjoy the afternoon out in God’s creation. And enjoy it we did. Later on, we’d both forgotten about the storm that was forecast to roll in, so it was a pleasant surprise…I love storms.

So, enjoy the pics, now here in one slideshow along with a few that didn’t get posted to TwitPic. Admittedly, there weren’t many that didn’t…

Of course, Sydney has major ugliness as well – it’s a city of 5 million people after all. But I’ve done a fair bit of travel and I’m yet to see anything which truly compares with Sydney Harbour. It is easy for us to take it for granted. Maybe next time we’ll do a trip on the Harbour for you

Anyway, to finish, a 5 minute vlog (or vodcast?) of some of the storm. As usual with our vids, it is completely unedited. I’d love to spend the time editing them, and maybe Diane will sometime when she’s not editing our church TV program. Anyhoo, I was happy with how well this came out as I’d not tested the video capability of my phone before. I especially like how the pic gets a bit wavy when I moved – a little surreal. Ignore the verbal diarrhea which runs throughout though.

‘Til next time – Seeya!

Much of this last week has been spent reflecting on the conference last week and the ’shift’ that has happened in our own church during the past month or so – like some “universal revelation” has descended into our hearts and minds and we’re now in a new phase for our church. To sound like a broken record – it’s exciting, but also scary…

Music
My good friend Dante (lyricist of the third song…) was leading this week. I’m also his mentor for his Bible College course, and we’re accountability partners. I have been really blessed seeing him grow from being barely confident in song leading to being a wonderfully effective worship leader.

AM
What The World Will Never Take (Sampson, etc/Hillsong) – Dante has a good rock voice, and so the rockier Hillsong tracks like this sound great in his voice. I can fake it to a certain extent, but why would I?
Say So (Houghton/Gungor) – always good fun, our version has taken on a middle ground between Israel’s soul and Michael’s rock interpretations of their song.
To Meet You Here (Goodwin/Scarpato/Harbourside) – it feels a little weird to review your own songs, but this was totally beautiful this week. Always a huge compliment when you get people turning up to the resource desk asking where they can buy the song on CD
Hallelujah (Myrin/Sampson/Hillsong) – from 2004 and an ‘old’ favourite, we’ve only done this song once in the last 3 years. It was time to bring it back. I think it went for 15 minutes before we stopped the congregation – yes, you read that right…

PM
All Day (Sampson/Hillsong)
Saving Son (Murgida/Harbourside)

Worship+
You Deserve The Glory (Richards)
Shout Unto God (Houston/Hillsong)
This Is Our God (Morgan/Fielding/Hillsong)

The Ablaze Youth Band are getting really good musically. Our new mics have helped with some clarity issues that these guys often struggled with before, but it’s also because they are simply growing. Their ability to flow in the move of the Holy Spirit was shown tonight with Worship+ being the best yet. Beautiful.

Messages
The AM message was “Don’t Be Deceived”, and included some prophetic word for our congregation based on the story of Gideon’s army. Just a quick review of the notes shows 15 verse/passage references to reflect on for the week – hadn’t realised there were that many, but I wrote them down so they must be right

The PM message was another unplanned one; I was talking with PsG after the morning service, and during our talk he came up with the title “Preparing, Protecting and Positioning”. He decided to go home and prepare that message for tonight rather than using the planned message. At this rate, the planned series on “Training For Reigning” won’t get done until next year. And that is fine if God keeps giving PsG messages as powerful as this past month.

Service Summaries
I had no concept that the AM service ran over by an hour, again. In addition to longer music at the beginning, and a slightly longer message, the people did not want to leave after the service either, and the reprise of Hallelujah kept on keeping on. For the first time in ever, we didn’t have an altar call. I think this was a combination of realising the service had run long (and this was before the closing soak), but also just simply forgetting. PsG is still human after all.

The PM service and Worship+ ran right on the “suggested” length. It’s exciting to see our evenings growing in attendance these past few weeks, and I do think it’s partly due to the fact the word is spreading the the youth team are doing a great job with the music (cos the messages were always top class

Also, the sound was quite probably the best it has ever been for both services. This makes me very happy.

However, undoubtedly THE most fun bit was having our friend Jenni do a voice-over for a segment of our church news. Whispers in the crowd: “who’s the American?”, our response: “well, actually she’s Chinese”… Cue bemused looks and no further questions…hahahaha.

Favourite Moments
A shout out to my wonderful wife Diane who was in the tech booth this week making sure ProPresenter work our first Mac service. Yay We still need to work on the live video syncing (it’s a bit behind), but all things considered, it was great…and all the things Diane did were very smooth. The diff between what we had and what we now have is huge, and there’ll be more changes to come as Diane keeps creating new bits to include in the visuals.

No pastorisms this week…oh well, you can’t have everything I suppose. I’m still waiting for the reprise of bitter and twittered…

Annoying Moments
Nothing directly related to the service, but Diane only got about half-an-hour’s sleep last night. As a result, she was running on adrenalin and prayer (and coffee, I think), which seems to have done the job better than she could have hoped. God’s good like that.

Well I’ve caved to husband pressure in order to provide my first ever guest blog! David has already supplied his perspective on the Bill Johnson conference @ Dayspring last weekend, but as I was the one taking notes the old-school way, he thought I may have picked up on something else. And since I get told that I look at things from a different angle most times, I thought, ‘why not’.

First things first, I don’t think I was mentally prepared for a conference, but I find I seldom am. Busy, tired, distracted; I’m sure most of you know the drill. I also don’t ‘do’ crowds at the best of times. I needn’t have worried – the team @ Dayspring know how to welcome and make people feel comfortable from the get-go, and one of our Pastors had kept seats for us, so it was easy. And it was PACKED. So many people with expectation in a smallish room. It was tangible how hungry people were for the Word.

The Dayspring worship team kicked everything off – they were tight, volume maybe a bit low (or it could be that my hearing has been permanently damaged by ear-bleedingly loud sound elsewhere…), but the most important thing was that the Holy Spirit was there. An hour of full-on worship is a wonderful thing, but my note to self was to not wear heels next time…hard to enter in when you can’t feel your toes.

I just could hardly wait to hear Bill Johnson. You have to understand that I’d never heard of the guy until a copy of ‘Dreaming With God’ caught my eye in a Christian bookstore, and told me to buy it. It did, really. When I read that book I felt something shift in my head, heart and spirit, and the repercussions of that are still being felt today. It was the catalyst to rediscover my creativity – something that had been shoved down as ‘not practical or worthwhile’ and ‘only a hobby’. Since then, God has opened doors for me to try my hand at video editing, animation, graphics and to have people like it. A big boost to the old self-esteem.

I’d heard some podcasts from Bethel Church, and I liked what I heard, so I knew the content of the conference would be good. However, it’s like David said, being able to watch and share the move of God as it happens is something else.

Some of my highlight quotes of the weekend:

“People who feed on bad news can never become part of the solution.”

“The world is crying out for an example of the goodness of God. He’s better than we think.”

“Everything and everyone before Jesus pointed to something they could describe, but could not demonstrate.”

“We each represent an aspect of God’s character that no-one else on earth can.”

“The problem with the church is that we have exchanged ‘the Kingdom of God is near’ for ‘the end of the world is near.’ “

“God isn’t looking for an answer, but a testimony.” (LOVE this.)

“We’re told to ‘grieve not’ and ‘quench not’ the Holy Spirit. We grieve Him when we do wrong things. We quench Him when we don’t do the right things.”

“We have to learn not to be offended at God, and unimpressed with us.”

“The Holy Spirit is imprisoned in unbelieving believers.”

“The church spends a lot of time praying for what we already have.”

“God may ask you to sell your house and give the proceeds to the poor, and the next day ask you to open a savings account. When you ask “Why? God, you’re confusing!!” He says, “That’s why you need to stay close.”

David Crabtree – “When there is no Holy Spirit, we are governed by externals.”

I could go on, and on, and on, but space and a blog reader’s attention span may be limited!

I talked of a shift in my heart, mind and head after reading the book. Well, after this weekend it feels like I’ve been rotating on a certain axis – it was a perfectly fine axis as it was still going round – but there has now been a shift of degrees. I can feel it, and I know it. Without getting too esoteric on youse all It feels that I can see things clearer and am stronger. And totally non-hyped.

I was prayed for by one of the team – I didn’t go forward or anything, we were to pray for those around us, and she turned to me twice – I recall her praying for me to have ’sharp teeth’ like a lion, to be given wisdom as I walk into what God has for me to do, and that I would be given the right words to say, because God has given me the ability to speak and create a new atmosphere, as my words contain weight and make people listen. I certainly hope so.

So yes, I’m still experiencing a little conference-sickness. It was an awesome time full of hope and joy, now it’s the hard yards of applying it. I do know one thing – after being a bit non-plussed by the noisy and ‘big-bang’ ministry experiences in the past, I’ve realised that when correctly applied, there is NOWHERE else I’d rather live than in a life where the prophetic, and the tangible and frequent intervention of the Holy Spirit is expected and experienced. I want to hear amazing stories of the miraculous power of God for healing and not just say ‘wow’, but to also go “yep, that’s what happened when we prayed too”. People who live in that way don’t need to shout and scream, they just allow God to move, and there is a closeness in their relationship to Him. They KNOW Him.

I want that, please.

* I’ve often come back from conferences ‘hyped’ and ready to do stuff.  Once the hype wears off, so does the desire to do stuff.  There was no hype here.  In fact, almost the opposite.  DaySpring Church are probably one of the most old-school-yet-modern pentecostal churches in Sydney and flowing in extended free-worship, prophecy, healing, etc is normal for them, which is undoubtedly one of the reasons why Bill has taken on apostolic leadership for the church.  Both Diane and I have come away from the weekend feeling a shift in our mindsets, a shift in our spirits, and completely unhyped.  Just ready to move deeper into the mysteries of our wonderful God.  Everyone else who has been there this weekend is feeling the same.

* If you’re not familiar, do some research on Bill and Beni Johnson (his wife) and their home church Bethel in Redding, CA.  Their ministry has seen people raised from the dead, creative healings, countless other miracles, and all without any of the flashiness that can sometimes be part of these ministries. They are real people.  They both had people in the conference congregation praying for them, laying on hands, etc.

* David Crabtree, the pastor of DaySpring, gave a snippet of his awesome teaching series on grace.  In short, grace doesn’t just mean “unmerited favour” like so many of us think.  Try some word substitution with some key verses and you’ll soon see that “empowered presence” is really what God is getting at.

* By far the majority of the sessions were designed to help us walk in authority when we pray, especially for healing or recreative needs.  We weren’t just receiving, we were doing.  Practical workshops in any other context always leave me feeling “ugh”, but this was so beautiful, natural and real that I soon realised this is how I need to live my whole life.  One thing Bill said that really resonated with me was about why some are healed and some aren’t, etc, etc.  This is not a direct quote, not even close, but I’m going to put it on here as a quote…for effect, ya know.

Jesus came to earth, fully God and fuly human, yet stripped himself of His divinity in order to live as humans except that He was completely without sin.  He was therefore totally reliant on the power of the Holy Spirit to “do” all the things He did (and remember, if all of that was written down, there would not be enough room in the entire planet to house it).  When Jesus died for us, we too became blameless, sinless.  He then sent the Holy Spirit to live in and with us.  So from the day of pentecost onwards, we have had exactly the same “tools” at our disposal as Jesus did.  The only thing which prevents us from being as effective in our lives as Jesus was is our self-imposed separation from the fullness of the Holy Spirit.  In other words, our free-will.  We have all we need, we just don’t use it, or even realise it.  The reason some are healed and some aren’t is that I’m not aware of everything that is going on, I’m not in that place of total submission to the Holy Spirit.

And that was from just one minute of the hours of gold this ministry team brought.  The way he explained this made so much sense.  If I haven’t made sense, and you wanna know more, leave a comment and I’ll try to elaborate or simplify.

That’s all I can process for now.  I do plan on doing another post with some more of the thoughts from our notes (actually, Diane is likely gathering some thoughts for that post – a guest post from my wife!), but we eventually stopped taking notes as we’ve ordered the CDs.  There is just too much to take in all at once.  I take comfort in knowing that I’m not the only one who thinks this way too, others who’ve heard Bill speak before didn’t even start taking notes and just ordered the CDs before the conference even began…they were ahead of the game.

So far, we are not even the slightly disappointed.  I was tweeting some of the gems he shared (and being selective is hard…), and hashtagged them with #billjohnson if anyone is wanting to search.

I already knew he was a funny man as well as being incredibly humble about God’s destiny for him and the people he shepherds.  My favourite of his funny gems tonight was…

I have found Aussies are fairly quiet until they drink

Very astute Bill

The band from Dayspring Church, where the conference is being held, led us in some Jesus Culture songs (Can I Have More If You?, King Of Glory) before going into some solid worship with their own music, finishing with Hillsong’s The Stand.  The hour of worship flew by, as did the next close-to-three hours of teaching and healing.  74 healings.  Amazing.

Can’t wait for tomorrow!

Just to share that we are both WAY EXCITED (hmmm, more of the semi-street-talk stuff that just does not work in my accent…) about the fact we are attending a great conference tonight and tomorrow…

Bill Johnson (of Bethel Church, Redding, CA) is here for his “When Heaven Invades Earth” conference tour. We are big fans of his books, and his podcasts too. The opportunity to be at this conference was too great to pass up; we don’t get a whole lot of visits from people of Bill’s calibre.

We are looking forward to what God has to say to us and the wider Australian church through these meetings. YAY!