Louie Giglio brings passion to Liberty Convocation

The Passion City Church Band led worship during Wednesday’s Convocation.

Liberty University students got a taste of the popular Passion Conferences, complete with a spirited time of worship led by the Passion City Church Band, and a message from Louie Giglio, founder of the conferences and pastor of Passion City Church in Atlanta, during Convocation on Wednesday.

After the sounds of popular Christian anthems like “Even So Come,” “One Thing Remains,” and “Forever” faded, Giglio opened God’s Word to challenge the students.

He began by telling them that questioning what God wants them to do with their lives is a “time stealer” and a “stress breaker.”

“We spend so much of our time in the past trying to undo things that have happened in our lives, and we spend so much time in the future trying to project what it is all going to look like, that we are incapacitated in the here and now,” he said. “We have turned into a zombie generation, where we do not really know how to be in the moment because we are frozen and paralyzed by what the moment might be in the future.”

Giglio told students that when he was a freshman in college, he was stuck in a place where the outward profession of his faith did not match the inward reality of his life.

“When God entered the story, He captured me —mind, body, and soul. It was so evident to me that God wanted me to spend my life communicating His story to people,” he said. Giglio described opening the Bible and reading Isaiah 6:8, which states, “Here am I, send me.” That moment changed the entire trajectory of Giglio’s life.

“Everything that happened to Isaiah began with the vision that he had of God,” Giglio said. “You do not have to be a preacher to be used by God. That is what I love about Liberty. You are training all kinds of people to live for the glory of God. Go be an aviator, a biomedical (scientist), a doctor, an attorney, or go into the NBA, but do it to the glory of God.”

This begins, he said, with a believer’s testimony, which Giglio warned students not to overcomplicate.

“When you accept Christ, your story is that you were dead, but now you are alive,” he said. “From a culture that says,  ‘Here am I, fix me or shield me,’ God says, ‘Have a surpassing vision of my greatness and my grace.’”

Giglio challenged students to not use their guilt, shame, and brokenness as a roadblock. He added that nothing — not their flaws or weaknesses — can prevent God from using them.

“God wants us to meet Him in such powerful life-altering way that we move towards the sufficiency of God and away from the insufficiency of us,” he said. “God can use a rock, He can use a pinecone, and He can certainly use you.”

Giglio told students that if they say “yes” to God, the road ahead will be difficult, and different than what they expect, but it will be better than what they could have imagined as well.

“When you see the all-surpassing greatness of God and experience the transforming grace of God, then you know it is not ‘me,’ but it is ‘I am willing.’”

Giglio and the Passion City Church Band will also lead Liberty’s Campus Community on Wednesday night.