Louie Giglio and Passion Music close out fall semester at Advent Convocation

Louie Giglio, pastor of Passion City Church in Atlanta and founder of the Passion Movement and its Passion Conferences, brought Liberty University students a message fitting for Friday morning’s Convocation theme of Advent, a time of expectant faith that God will deliver.

“Passion” is an annual event held in recent years in the Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, where tens of thousands of college-age students from around the world gather to worship and learn from God’s Word. During Friday’s message in the Vines Center, Giglio said that Liberty is expected to once again be the most-represented school at Passion 2024, set for Jan. 3-5 with an anticipated audience of over 50,000.

Prior to Giglio taking the stage, Passion Music led the student body in worship, opening with the Christmas song “O Come Let Us Adore Him.”

Being that Friday was the final Convocation of the semester, Giglio acknowledged that many students will encounter questions from others or themselves about their future. Are they in the right area of study? Will they find a job in their chosen field after graduating? Will the path they’re on lead to where they want to be?

The answer to those questions is a source of anxiety for many, Giglio said, but he noted that God isn’t asking His followers to “carry the burden of figuring it all out.”

“This is Advent Convocation. Advent is a season leading up to Christmas, and “advent” simply means that we are waiting in expectation with confidence that God is going to do something,” Giglio said. “God, the Creator of the universe, has a plan for your life. He created you on purpose, for a purpose. He has, for your life, a reason, a destiny, a calling. He not only has a plan, but He is working on it right now.”

Much like how God, after not speaking to His people for 400 years, brought forth Jesus and the choir of angels “suddenly” appeared to the shepherds in Luke 2, God can quickly present His plan to believers at the perfect time.

Giglio said when he was a college student he had a plan for himself. He was going to play tennis at Georgia State and then professionally for the rest of his career. He spent countless hours on the court each week sharpening his skills, but he didn’t listen to God’s plan. Giglio was 39 years old when Passion Conferences was created in 1997, and he didn’t become the lead pastor of Passion City Church until he was 51.

“I want to implore you as a 22-year-old: don’t stress about the plan,” he told students, “God has a plan, He knows the plan, He’s working on the plan, and when the time is right, what may seem slow to you is going to happen suddenly to Him and He will show you what He’s been working on for your life. He’s going to show you how He has been preparing you all this time to step into the moment He has for you.”

Giglio told a story about his father, who enjoyed making abstract art, and how his mother disliked a painting he did and cut it down to a smaller size to make it more visually appealing, removing his father’s signature and other parts of the painting. Years later, Giglio recovered the missing piece with the signature, and while the truncated painting hangs downstairs in his home, he now keeps the signed piece in his upstairs study as a reminder to think of God’s plan as a larger artwork than what may be immediately visible.

“Separated by two floors in our house is the whole story,” he said. “If you just see the (part) in my study, it would have no meaning to you unless you walked down two flights of stairs and saw the rest of it. What God is wanting to say today to you and me is that He is painting right now, but He is painting on a canvas that is bigger than you can see or understand. Where we get tripped up is when we’re looking at the postage stamp (version) and say, ‘I don’t know what this is.’”

In the effort to see the bigger masterpiece, Giglio said believers ought to solely desire God first.

“God is more interested in our desire than in our destination,” he said, “If God was primarily interested in our destination, He would have just given us the plan (from the beginning). There are things that you don’t want to be in the plan. We’re living on a broken planet; we’re not promised that there won’t be suffering in our life as followers of Jesus. We’re actually promised that there will be suffering in our lives as followers of Jesus.”

“Sometimes we are counting on God to guide us more than we are confident in God being with us,” he added. “We need Him, not the plan.”

“You weren’t created for a destination; you were created for God … and God wants you to come to Him and be content. Whatever you do, you’re going to do it with God.”

Giglio concluded with God’s words in Isaiah 41:13,  “For I am the Lord, your God, who takes hold of your right hand and says to you, ‘Do not fear; I will help you.’”