redeemer//

Planetshakers '06. a night to remember, yeah. Pre attending the concert there were many speculations from various groups of friends attending to the issue of commercialism and its effect on the 'spiritual' side of planetshakers.

For instance, they were farr too focused on trying to hook money out of your pockets and they sorta left out the GOD part of the conference, that when people jumped around, they were doing it for fun, not for GOD. I can specifically recall a friend saying that the crowd (during the message) would yell out at almost everything, just to make loud noises.

So you can imagine that i went to planetshakers obviously a bit shaken (pardon the pun) on how it would turn out. But obviously those were opinions and i had to go create my OWN opinion of the conference...which is exactly what i went to do (2 nights ago).

Well i was a bit worried from the start, when we had 3 extra people to carry in 4 cars (23 in total) but you know, just pray about it and yeah. So we loaded them all in, drivers being Wei Kee, Tak, Emily and Crosby. Tak, Emily and Wei Kee's cars were over full, our car (Crosby's) was just ok, with Collin, Ken (in the same car...chaos), Sarah and Myself. at 6 00 sharp (ok fine, maybe 6 15) we were on our way to Challenge Stadium!

Remember the part i said earlier about praying? yeah guess wat, with 3 cars in our convoy overloaded we just HAD to pass a booze bus. All of our cars got checked. -.-....remember the part i said about praying earlier? none of our cars got pulled aside.

thank God for small miracles *gets down on knees*

Upon arriving, all of us PILED (literally) into the entrance walkway, where a line of ...ok, alot of people were waiting. Thanks to some smart moves (Wei Kee and Cham) we managed to eaaaaase our way slowly up the side of the line (sneaky aren't we?) to secure our position probably in the first 1/3 of the line. Which almost ensured us a seat. Thank God, it did. Just as we walked in.....the whole place was filled APART from one section which had like 100 empty seats, so yea, you guessed it. we RAN for that section, pushing past (well, fine, i think that was just me) everybody in our way! Eventually, our entire youth group got a seat in one section. (thank you God) We also met Matt Abbey n Lisa!! from ROL, haven't seen u guys in ages, and it was sure good to see you again.

When the music began, i'll be honest. I wasn't feeling up to it, for a number of reasons. The first was probably because of all the things i had heard beforehand and it sorta just killed the mood you know? the second was because i wasnt in the mosh pit! and jumping when there's a risk of falling onto the seat in front of you (auditorium design problems ><) is not as appealing as it would be in the mosh pit. but Jumped we did!!!!! Cham and i jumped to the first few songs, just to try and get into the mood....Cham was awesome, he had all the moves going! XD i was sorta jumping half heartedly...still struggling with the 'lack' of an atmosphere. I had also never heard those songs before, so the fact that i didnt know when to yell out or wave my hands didn't help too much either. But our group was fine, my 2 lovely sisters behind me particularly loved the song "Redeemer" yelling out JESUS whenever the crowd yelled out..

My saviour, He's living in me, Redeemer - JESUS! - He set me free!

Go guys! haha you rocked XD
When the praise session ended, it was the part that i was most ....interested in. The offering, you see according to a few people, the offering speech was designed to make people feel OBLIGED to give....which is obviously not really the way to go. I've forgotten who made the offering speech, but well, to be frank, he WAS a bit more forceful on the fact that giving with a generous spirit was the way to save the generation etc etc. but i mean, i can sorta see where he's coming from......I read recently an article that was headed,

'political power? show us the economical power first!'

however, on the same note, if a conference is based on making money and not so much evangelising..it could send out the wrong message to many young believers or perhaps unbelievers....that was my main concern. Nevertheless, the offering speech wasn't AS BAD as i would have thought, and it was over in less than 2 minutes...although it left me pondering the motives of the conference, i decided to try to put it behind me and focus on what i was REALLY here for, God.

Henry Seeley got up there (and i think he's awesome....just so u know XD) and did the worship session, again, singing songs that i have never heard of. And again, i wasn't really feeling the TRUE feeling of worship, like i usually feel in perhaps even a much smaller environment...as i looked around though, i saw people all over the place with their arms outstretched, reaching for God and well, quite frankly, i was jealous.

Why couldn't i feel the presence of God right there and then? Cham next to me was quite possibly radiating the desire to worship, with his arms reaching out and his voice singing the praises of God (he is, by chance, a very good singer) in fact i think i was the only one out of our whole group ..(btw i just typed 5 o's in a row back there <---) that wasn't feeling the worshipful atmosphere. I really tried so hard....and therein lay my problem.

Bear with me here, my mind tends to get complex about this. But i was so caught up trying to figure out WHY i wasn't in the worshipful mood to even try GETTING into the worshipful mood, i was so focused on trying to figure out what was wrong, that i never thought about what was right.... there's a really good saying, "you'll never win if you're counting the reasons of why you'll lose" and i guess that kinda hit the spot.

You know, it's a real pity that i only realised it during the message. All that wasted time >.> but still, the message by Russell Evans (head of Planetshakers) was awesome. i thought it really hit home a few points. It was about AGREEMENT and incidentally, i have never agreed with anything more in my life ><, about how Jesus is the box BREAKER and satan is the box MAKER. His illustrations were also very effective when it came to explaining why agreement within the church is so important. And i loved the end part where he beat the boxes (all named, mediocrity, disunity, blame etc etc) to a piece of crap. I was like YER! YOU TELL THEM! (i did get a bit carried away....all for a good cause XD)

but you know, then God came into the building. It goes like this. He turned to us and asked us all to pray for our youth groups, and as i looked around the whole hall, i saw groups of 3 people in a tight embrace, praying for each other, i saw groups of 10 people all with arms linked singing soft songs of worship, i saw groups of 20 people with hands joined praying for one another.....and i just felt so moved, honestly, God had to have been there. He was there, i know it. So what else could i do? i grabbed the hands of those next to me, and asked our youth group to get into a circle, we prayed for each other, for the youth group, for guidance, and like, a spirit of unity just descended upon us....and dang, i felt peace. FOR ONCE in my life, absolute peace. I'm not sure about the others, but i was like, wow......just.......wow........

And that's when i felt relatively convinced that this conference (or what was left of it) was gonna be good. I was gonna make it good for myself. So as Russell Evans got off the stage and Henry Seeley and the team came back, we all got ready to jump like crazy XD. They decided to play Majesty, which is a totally awesome song, PERFECT for the situation, and they did it well! Cham and i pulled out all the stops!! just couldn't stop jumping, Jenny and Annie behind me were yelling quite convincingly and even Justin and Rachael in front of us decided to get moving a bit! Until we all got so tired.....i got a stitch, Cham almost stacked it and fell the equivalent of 3 meters, and my two dear sisters behind me yelled until one was hungry and the other had a headache.... but it was all good XD praise God for such a group as them =) you guys (if reading this) rock! Keep rocking for Jesus, He loves it =D!

All majesty, to the God of creation, All majesty, we sing!~

Getting home wasn't a problem, getting out of the stadium, was. So we had to SQUEEZE our way out (well some of us) the others just waited for the crowd to dissipate. Everybody went straight home, quite exhausted from the night spent >< once again, if reading this, thank you Crosby for sending all 4 of us to our respective homes. That was really good of ya, and thank you ALL drivers for putting in that effort, you made the difference that day =)

You know, i got up this morning, and i was just happy. In fact i was so busy singing Redeemer on my way out, i almost tripped over Mimi (my poodle) she was a bit annoyed but you know, i was too happy to notice XD. Church was fine and all, but what really made me laugh was Emily's comment about Cham and I,

"You know, we were just like standing there clapping, but whenever we looked to our left we'd see like 2 guys just jumping up and down and going crazy"

hahaha! Feels good to leave a mark doesn't it?


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