Ok, so I'm a little late seing as how Manifest was like 4 days ago, but I got around to it finally! This entry is gonna be a little long, cos Manifest was so FULLY AWESOME!!! that there's alot of things to cover..SO PAY ATTENTION!! lol.. jks!

 

For the unknowing out there, Manifest is an awesome youth conference on every few months by a church in Melbourne called Melbourne Life. Every few months they hold a one-night rally on a Saturday, but once a year right before term two starts they have their "Training Dayze" Conference, which goes from Thursday night through to Saturday night. They have awesome speakers not only from their own church, but from all over the place! Some of the speakers this year include Ps. Bram and Diane Manusama, senior pastors at Melbourne Life, Sidney Mohede from Indonesia, he's part of the BMG Band, Ps. John Steele from New Zealand, Henry Seeley from Planet Shakers.. and soo many more!

Now, the reason i love manifest so much, and the reason it's different to other youth rallies and conferences, is that it's sorta more.. low key. Like, it's smaller, but still pretty big.. but there's like not all the security restriction of Planet Shakers or Youth Alive. Like, all the night rallies are free, anyone can go up the front or in the isles or anywhere else.. you can go like right against the stage, and the stage isn't as high.. so it's less like a concert sort of setting. And afterwards, and during lunch breaks and stuff, the people are just there, not like backstage or restricted area or anything, you can just go chat to em like anyone else! It's so good! anywayy, on to the conference!

 

Ok, I'll break it down rally by rally, steam by stream and workshop by workshop, but first I'll just explain what these are:

Rallies: these include 5 rallies over the course of the time, Thursday night, Friday morning and night, and Saturday morning and night. I'll just say now that right from the Thursday night, each rally had absolutely AWESOME worship time, and it just got better each time! It was always so powerful, and it always lead into a time of free spiritual worship, which was just AMAZING!

Streams: After the morning rally we had streams.. which were like overviews of the four main workshop catergories: creative ministry, leadership, community impact and supernatural. You could pick which one you wanted to go to, based on what you were most interested in or whatever

Workshops: as mentioned, these broke into four catergories.. each with a number of.. 'specialised' workshops, depending on what you were in to. For example the creative ministries catergory had things like worship leading, song writing, guitar, keyboard, drums and bass, graphic design.. and so on and so forth

 

Right, now that that's out of the way, we can move on to the good stuff! This is basically gonna be the weekend in short:

 

Keep in mind, this is just my interpretation of what was said.. if you were there and don't agree, please let me know! I'm not claiming to be right all the time!

 

Thursday: Left at around 5:30pm to get down there by 7pm for the opening night rally. As i mentioned, all the worship was awesome, so I'll just focus on the speaking from here on out. Ps. John Steele was speaking this time, and what he said was awesome! the main point i got out of it was to focus on conviction, not on culture. Meaning we cant just do things because that's the traditional way to do it, we have to do what God has put on our hearts, that will please Him and be of the best benefit. Another main point was, it's not how you start, but how you finish. We may think 'oh yay, we've been saved, it's all good now.' But that's just the start. What's important is that we keep going in the race, growing closer to God, so that it's how we finish that determines where we end up!

Anyway, so i think we left there around 9:45pm.. then we stopped at Hungry Jacks on the way home, so we got home just after 11pm, but then i was on the phone, either talking or texting, till like 12:30am.

 

Friday: got up around 6:30am, left at about 7am i think.. starting to get a little tired. The mornin rally was great, of course. Ps Bram Manusama spoke on being God's chosen nation, and made some interesting connections between the exodus in the Old Testament and the Day of Pentecost in the New Testament.

Then it was streams. I did the creative ministries steam with Sidney Mohede from Indonesia. He said some really good things, the main things i picked up on were being humble, because it's not about us, and being yourself, not imitating what you think you should be doing.

Then workshops: First I did Preaching with Purpose with Ps. Frank Saliba from Melbourne Life. That was really good! The thing i got most was that we shouldn't try and look at want we want the people to get from the sermon, or th fruit as he called it, and then make our sermon bassed on that. Instead we should focus on getting an intamate relationship with God, because when we have that, the rest will all fall into place as He planned.

Then i did song writing with Henry Seeley.. not much to report on that. Twas good though.. but i'd done it before, so it was a little repetative.

Then the night rally was awesome again! Ps. Diane Manusama spoke, I just cant remember exactly what on.. There was some stuff happening that night, so i missed some of it.. I'll get back to ya later on that.

Then we left at around 9:30, Hungry Jacks stop again, but we weren't allowed to stay long this time, so we could only order burgers that were already made. So me and Tristen walk in and I'm like "I'll have that one" while pointing, and she was like "a whopper?" and I'm like "Meh, that'll do". So then Tristen did the same, but he got a bacon deluxe.. but then we swapped cos he wanted a whooper. Then we were both still huingry, and all they had was a few cheeseburgers and a hamburger, so I was like, "yeah, we'll take all of them!".. lol, twas amusing. So we got home around 11ish again, this time i got to sleep a lttle quicker.. like around 11:45pm.

 

Saturday: Got up once again at 6:30am, left at 7am.. so on the way the tiredness was really kicking in.. but when we got there, i got over it again! lol. The morning rally was, you guessed it, awesome!! Ps. Bram was speaking again, talking about the gift of the prophetic. Then they had a time where Ps. Diane and Ps. John Steele just went around prophesying over different people.. it was awesome!

Streams: I did community impact with Ps. Dan Leanne (that's probably spelt wrong, so if anyone knows how to spell it, let me know). That guy is a legend! He was so good at getting the point across, but so funny at the same time! what stood out most for me was that as a church, and personally, we need to move from an inward focus to an outward focus. Focus on others rather than ourselves. and also, the church shouldn't be about building walls to keep Christians safe, but about building bridges to allow others in!

Then workshops: I did youth bands with Henry Seeley, then Guitar Drums and Bass with the Manifest drummer, guitarist and bassist. Both were really good, but not much to add up here.. plus, I'm running out of time! hehe

THEN: we come to the last night rally! As I said earlier, they got better as they went along.. well this night was AMAZING!! i think the worship went for like 2 hours.. or at least it felt like that, because it was just so powerful! Everything about it was just so fully centred on God, and His presence could be felt all over the hall!! It was soooo incredible! Then Ps. Diane spoke.. I think it was on the gift of tounges.. Idont remember everything, but I just remember it was incredibly powerful! She was prophesying in tounges, then giving the interpretations.. and everything about it was just incredible! Then there was more even more worship.

Then we were chatting with friends, and saying goodbye to the new people we'd met that conference.. Then people went to look at the Word Bookstore stand, so wew didn't leave manifest unitl like 10:50pm. So we got Hungry Jacks at around 11:20pm, ordered HEAPS of food.. especially Tristen, and to a lesser extent, me. Then we started taking random photo's of our group and stuff, and of me sleeping on a bench seat thing.. (i was faking).. then we got photos with the Hungry Jacks staff, just cos they were there.. so i think we didn't leave till about 12:20 or so.. got home after 1.. so i was so tired the next day.. but it was all worth it!!

 

 

So, there it is.. that's a rundown of all the meetings and workshops. of course, there was some things going on during breaks, like seeing how many random people we could go introduce ourselves too! but there's really way too much stuff for one entry.. and I've already written heaps!

 

 

So, till next time, God Bless everyone! and leave me a comment! hehe.

 

 

P.S. Next Manifest night rally is in July.. I'll post more details soon.

 

This is a story I found on a random site, so i thought iI'd chuck it here, since I've been meaning to update for quite some time. I'm not sure if it's a true story or not, but it does make you think...

 

It was a cold winter's day that Sunday. The parking lot to the church was filling up quickly. I noticed as got out of my car fellow church members were whispering among themselves as they walked in the church.

As I got closer I saw a man leaned up against the wall outside the church. He was almost laying down as if he was asleep. He had on a long trench coat that was almost in shreds and a hat topped his head, pulled down so you could not see his face. He wore shoes that looked 30 years old, too small for his feet, with holes all over them, his toes stuck out. I assumed this man was homeless, and asleep, so I walked on by through the doors of the church.

We all fellowshipped for a few minutes, and someone brought up the man laying outside. People snickered and gossiped but no one bothered to ask him to come in, including me.

A few moments later church began. We all waited for the Preacher to take his place and to give us the Word, when the doors to the church opened.

In came the homeless man walking down the aisle with his head down. People gasped and whispered and made faces.

He made his way down the aisle and up onto the pulpit where he took off his hat and coat. My heart sank. There stood our preacher ...he was the "homeless man".

No one said a word. The preacher took his Bible and laid it on his stand. "Folks, I don't think I have to tell you what I am preaching about today."