Retreat

I was at the Powerhouse summer retreat this weekend from Thursday night through Saturday night up on the central coast in Gosford. Powerhouse is the 18-25 ministry at Hillsong. The retreat was an amazing way to start the year here in Sydney as it provided a great opportunity to get connected more with people who are not just at College but who are simply part of this church.

A huge blessing this weekend was getting free transportation and accommodation while in Gosford. The house that a large group (18 to be exact) of people stayed at was a beautiful house right on the water.

The retreat was so good. It was also way different than retreats I’ve been to before. Mostly just because of the size of this ministry, it had more of a conference feel to it. Hills, City, Southwest, and Brisbane campuses were all there, there was a different worship team each session, and a different speaker each session. All of it was wonderful.

I was particularly challenged and convicted by the message Thursday night delivered by Thomas Hansen, the Powerhouse pastor at Hills. He talked about “getting out of bed” or getting out of our comfort, our complacency, our sin. And how sometimes when our passion and zeal fades, we slide back and pull away from God and from our convictions a little bit. This hit me because I’ve been in this mindset where at times I’ve thought that just being here is “enough”. That being at Hillsong is “enough”. I can just do stuff here for a couple years, ride the Hillsong wave and not focus on growing my relationship with Christ in my own time, and then leave and be in a great place with life, God, etc.

But that’s not what God wants.

Simply being here isn’t enough. If I don’t show up everyday ready for what God has in store, I will have missed why I came here in the first place: to be completely engulfed by Jesus. That’s what I want to be. I’m glad that God showed me this early on rather than at the end of the year I look back and see that I didn’t grow at all.

So yeah. Retreat was good . I also had orientation on Wednesday and Thursday and classes really kick off on Tuesday. I’m excited that things are getting underway here and I can’t wait to see what happens this year.