Everything changes and has God’s purpose
‘For once you were full of darkness, but now you have light from the Lord. So live as people of light!’ Ephesians 5:8
In June we all headed off to the Waterfront for a weekend of teaching and worship. We had high expectations and weren’t disappointed. There were two main speakers this year: Christine Caine who is part of the leadership team at Hillsong Church in Sydney, Australia, and Beth Redman, who lives in Atlanta with her husband Matt, where they serve as part of a team leading Passion City Church.
Our first main session was ‘Spiritual Core’. Christine talked about how God wants to work on us from the inside out. We have to get our relationship right with him on the inside before we attempt to work for him on the outside. This carried on to the next session ‘Stop acting like a Christian’, where she talked about us acting out a Christian life on the outside yet not having God in our hearts. We should be free to ‘be’ Christians and not just act like one. Her third session concluded with ‘Awaken’, wake up and get out there and start saving people for Jesus. She gave us all a sense of how we should and could be doing more in our local communities.
Beth spoke about how God wants us to be renewed, so that we can develop a Christ-like mind. (Romans Ch.12). She highlighted that being spiritually minded brings God’s peace into our lives. God changes our disposition and our character, when we invite Him into our hearts.
Beth used the transformation of a butterfly to illustrate the various changes needed in our lives – renewal of the mind – how we must place ourselves wisely (away from danger/temptation) – be careful what we eat, and watch (TV) and say (gossip). As Beth put it – ‘shed and grow’ (Psalm 139) then beauty rises.
It was a packed and challenging weekend and we all came home refreshed and renewed.
From small beginnings Focusfest, which was founded in 1993, has become one of Europe’s biggest events for Christian women drawing together women from different denominations, backgrounds and locations.
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