“As I live, says the LORD, Every knee shall bow to Me, And every tongue shall confess to God.” (Rom 14:11 NKJV)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chl8Mh_l9OI
This video was taken at Bridges’ Vision Conference, the countdown party toward 2018. It took 4’34” for a cycle of the Happy New Year slides of our languages to be over. Isn’t it beautiful that all these tongues have been praising God together under one roof in the past few days?
I’m thankful that I ended up going to the conference; I didn’t plan to at first. “Another conference for young kids. Been there done that.” That’s what I thought to myself. I registered only after knowing that they had a separate track for partners and yet another track for South Asian students whom I have a special heart for. Both tracks turned out to be a great blessing.
God also made this conference meaningful to me at a personal, intimate level. Since the beginning of my internship with IFI, I have been praying to Him for breakthrough and unleashing, because I knew how damaged and hopeless I became after the 9 years of PhD studies. I was distressed and confused, for God was extremely silent throughout the second half of this PhD journey. Thankfully, God seems to have become active in my life again, and He responded to my prayers for breakthrough and unleashing during the Vision Conference. He spoke even before we entered the venue! Upon arrival at Hilton Baltimore, I realized immediately that it was the hotel where I attended the mission conference 4 years ago. I remember clearly the commitment I made to God at that time, and the theme of the conference was “unleashed.” Many memories came to flood my mind. Later at the opening night of Vision, I was introduced to a song “Alive Again” which I’d never heard before. The song was not even the style I typically listened to, but a line of the lyrics stood out distinctively: “You (Jesus) are my breakthrough.” I was singing with tears in my eyes throughout the rest of the worship time. The song turned out to be one of the two theme songs we sang everyday during the Vision Conference.
For a lot of people at the conference, these might not mean anything, but God spoke loudly through them to me. He encouraged me yet in many other ways during these 5 days, although I’m not going to list them all out here. I’m truly thankful that God has affirmed and renewed me in such an environment and atmosphere where many young people seek to know Him and to shine for Him. I miss that spiritual energy which I’ve grown up with on campus. I wrote in my journal:
2017 was monumental. Every tear and laughter, hill and valley, hope and disappointment… all have been wrapped up in this fruitful journey at the Vision Conference. It means profoundly for me to be in this place again. 4 years later… Different people, different language, different conference, different ethnicities. Same venue, same harbor, same time of a year, same calling, same faithful God.