An Eyewitness Account To The Heart Of Worship

More than a month after Matt Redman and Louie Giglio came to Manila for a worship concert at the Philippine International Convention Center, many people are still talking about the impact of that event.   One participant recently wrote up his personal reflection.

He says:  "It was a night not to be missed, definitely one to remember. People came in early to line up and fill the seats for the long awaited concert with Matt Redman together with Passion founder, Louie Giglio.  Matt came right on stage and kicked it off with Beautiful News, a new song from his latest album. It was a blast and you could feel the energy in the air, it was amazing. Another new song You Never Let Go became an instant favorite of mine. It's a light-rock song based on Psalm 23. Some other memorable songs in his line up were Let Everything That, Undignified, Heart of Worship, If you Know You're Loved by the King, and Blessed be your Name, How Great is Our God, Our God Reigns, and Friend of God.

At first, people were hesitant to come up in front to jump and dance… but when Dancing Generation (also a favorite in my youth group ) was played, we just had to go wild and be near the stage. All of a sudden, the bouncers who I had made friends with gave me a go signal that we could go start up the holy mosh pit!

Then Louie Giglio of Passion movement came up to deliver a powerful message.  He talked about how 'we are not to be consumers of worship (as though it's just for our benefit) but rather to be consumed by it,' and 'how sharing Jesus' love to others and really living it as a lifestyle is the real Heart of Worship.' So we must be already worshiping when we walk in the doors of the Church.

After the challenge, we resumed with singing and by this time others had followed up front and then the party was really going. Matt actually re-did Dancing Generation and Undignified.  The audience who were a little shy and conservative at first became just so alive this time around. After the last song, Matt and team said bye and went off stage but the people just couldn't get enough and so they chanted and roared "more, more!". And so Matt and his band came back on stage to do 2-3 more songs.   I think mean we nearly sang everything already!

And that was not all for me.   I and some colleagues from WMC-AP got to go backstage afterwards for a quick interview with Matt and Louie.  After their exhausting performance, they were gracious enough to do the interview in spite of the the fact that they just arrived that same day and were due to fly out early the next morning.  It was great meeting them and I must say both were very down to earth.  One of my questions to them was if they would be willing to come back to Manila, to which they replied with a 'YES'.  I guess seeing people come back to the Heart of Worship is what keeps them coming back for more. 

Here’s the video clip of the event for the rest of the story:

this post was filed under Inspirations on Jun 25, 2007