Hillsong United Conference: Phil Dooley

Phil Dooley is a gifted speaker with a true heart for God’s church. Below are my notes from his Fri Night Rally:

• Bible teaches us to live by more than what the newspaper or our neighbors tell us
• It is a more radical teaching that is based on truth

Ro 12:1-2 (The Message):

So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life – your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life – and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.

• We often have a great 2 hours on Sunday, then we live our lives like everyone else
• Don’t just live according to the culture
• Rise up above the culture that would dictate a life to you, that is below God’s very best
• World: Life is all tragedy, all pain, brought by God
• It is time to start living out the life that we are called to
• We are called to be light in the darkness
• We are called to see a little different, speak a little different than those that are hopeless seeing injustice and tragedy
• When things go wrong, the world blames God
• Sometimes things never seem to get better, that we can’t make a difference
• We all face tough times when we think things are all over
• Mary spoke this way to Jesus regarding the death of Lazarus
• Jesus doesn’t rebuke Mary, that she shouldn’t respond that way
• He accepts what has happened, so much so that he wept over the death
• Jesus didn’t ignore those that are hurting
• He comes along side them, as should we
• But He didn’t stop there, like we do sometimes
• We often identify with someone’s pain, then we just stay there
• Jesus says “Take me to the tomb”
• We need to cry, get upset, get emotional, then we need to go where the suffering is, just as Jesus did
• Jesus wanted to go to the place that seems like the most desolate, dead place
• We may not want to go to that place of death – we often avoid it
• We must be prepared to walk towards the place of death, as that is where life will emerge through Jesus

Psalm 40:1-2 (NIV): “I waited patiently for the Lord; he turned to me and heard my cry. He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand.”

• It is ok to cry
• He lifts us out, then asks us to do the same for others
• Phil and his family moved to Capetown, South Africa when most were leaving
• They went to bring hope to the city, not escape the problems
• Don’t just weep, look around for the death and despair bring light to it
• People may have said to Jesus, “No, it stinks in the tomb. Don’t go in there”
• Jesus was prepared to go where the death and despair is, to bring life
• Things may get tougher at times, but it is time to bring life where there is death and despair
• Don’t just live a nice Christian life – look at some tombs where there is darkness and death, walk toward it, and bring life back to it
• Take off the grave clothes and let the dead rise again with a brand new life!

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