Holy, Holy, Holy! What a beautiful way to finish a conference!

This is a video I took while I was in Orlando for the TGC conference. The Conference was almost a week long and we have taken the whole book of Luke and unpack it verse by verse. There were more than 80 prolific bible teachers and 5000 students and pastors from around the world. Betty and I were privileged to represent Ethiopia, with few others, as one of those 41 countries represented. I have witnessed the most glorious care for God’s word. I stood in awe of the glory of God. There were not much emotional hype, as a matter of fact there was none. What captured me the most was that all of us were interested in one thing and one thing alone. To hear what God has to say from HIS WORD! I mostly cried, and envied them to death.

Here was my prayer to all of us who sit and listen to God’s Word, to be able to discern and chosen what is better, that which will not be taken away from us, His word full of Life! I enjoyed sitting and listening to every word.

Here was my prayer to those of us who teach God’s word, I prayed we teach the way they do. I wish every teacher of the scripture learn from them, to make the point of the text of scripture we read to be the point of our sermon, instead of bending and forcing the word to say exactly what allegedly the Lord gave us to preach. The Word is the message. We must learn to make it our goal,  NOT  “to be Masters of the Word, but to be Mastered by the Word”. So to those of us who preach God’s Word I prayed that we may develop skills of listening to the Word rather than to use the Word to help us say what we want to say! I prayed the Word in our lips become the very scriptures, our message to be the very message of the Scripture and our joy to be announcing it. I prayed that we become prophetic from the center, meaning proclaiming God’s Word in the way it is written with the same spirit it is written. I have learned, the last five to six years, one precious lesson that preaching is showing people what’s there in the text rather than being clever! Preaching is re-revealing the God who revealed Himself through his Son!

Here is the song Holy, Holy, Holy! At this point the Mics were off, the music stopped. 5000 people singing altogether. It was heavenly! For me it was a beautiful way to finish a conference!