Honestly, I was kind of expecting to be bored. I had already read the book and I thought they were just going to repeat what the book said.
But what they said was really powerful, kind of giving a new spin on everything. Mr. Harris gave a really good talk on how there’s no way we can ‘do hard things’ or even any sort of good thing at all unless we are following God. Afterwards 150+ people said they wanted to know Christ.
There are so many things I could mention that they said, but one of the few things that really stuck out to me were these:

We become who we hang out with, who our companions are. But companions aren’t just people. The shows you watch, the books you read, the sites you surf are all your companions and you will become like them.

Parents/elders will ‘balance us out’. They have much more knowledge then us, but not as much strength. We kids have all the strength and ability but not the knowledge. Mr. Harris shared how he always wanted to evangelize and bring the gospel to people but he never really got a chance until his sons started the Rebelution.

I wish all of you guys could’ve been there, it was really amazing. I think you can buy the videos of the conference off therebelution.com. And honestly I certainly think it’s worth the thirty-five bucks.

The conference was absolutely amazing! I’m so glad I got to attend. One thing I really liked was how they talked about some of the same things that were in the book, but because they were speaking rather than writing, it seemed like they were able to expound on it and add more to it than before! They also continually reminded us to depend on God’s grace rather than our own strength, which was really helpful. Another thing that really stood out to me was when Brett was listing ways to stay strong / persevere in doing hard things, and he talked about “re-arranging the furniture in your life”…God really convicted me through that! I also learned that doing hard things is a way to be reminded of the Gospel. When I’m doing that, I can remember that I’m not just doing hard things for the sake of doing hard things, but that I’m doing it for the Gospel and for the glory of God. God showed me that I can be constantly reminded of the Gospel throughout every day by doing even small hard things, and not just save it for a dramatic, once-a-week moment, if you know what I mean.
Oh, and I also had the pleasure of meeting / talking to Josh Harris for a moment, for which I’m very grateful!
The Rebelution was amazing!

It was great. It was amazing to see the entire building filled. Every seat was taken. they even had to get chairs and make a few rows in the middle section. Even then there were still people in the ailses. It was amazing. Estimated over 3,000 people there. It was amazing to see that so many people had come out to hear stuff about God and how to live your life in a way that glorifies Him and causes you to not fail in life. :3

The messages. They set it up in 4 sessions. The first two Alex and Brett did(separately, in that order) were basically from the book. They used the same examples that they had. Not like it was a bad thing, but I was expecting them to teach us something newer…They used the Elephant and the rope example, the viking one, and they mentioned the bit about two horses pulling alot more than double what a single horse could pull(and much more!). So it was kinda like, “Why am I here if this is stuff we’ve already read and discussed?”

Nonetheless, it was good to hear it in a message context and they did elaborate a bit more on the topics. So it’s not like we wasted our time and money(and gas) going there. It was an awesome experience.

Then they had there dad do the third session. His message was spectacular. It was about how trees are known by their fruit. He referenced Ezekiel 11:19 on how only God can change our hearts from a heart of stone to a heart of flesh. He said that the heart is where we do our wanting. We try to get what we want. our sinful heart only wanted sin and didn’t want God. Our new heart wants God and doesn’t want sin. He used a good example of a sheep(being the new heart and spirit) inside a wolf’s body(the sinful nature that comes out of us to do evil and such). And how the sheep will grow as we grow spiritually.

Then he mentioned those who are wolf’s with sheep’s clothing who go through the movements of Christianity but don’t really believe in it and are waiting to devour those who do believe. He said that they are “fruit staplers”. They staple the good fruit of Christianity to themselves that you wouldn’t noticed are stapled unless you actually looked closely.

Afterwards, he asked everyone questions which the lucky people with these super-cool keypad things were able to answer and you saw the results on screen. I’d post the questions, but this is beginning to be a lengthy post as it is…..>.> For the most part they were, “How often do you pray to God as if you believe He is there to listen/How often do you read your Bible/How often do you obey God just because you believe in Him/do you see enough evidence of His grace in your life to be confident that you are born again?(possible answers: Never, Once in a While, Often. Last one, Yes or No)

The last question, there were 152 or something that said no…He then asked them again(only to the 152) saying it this way, “Would you like….No…..Do you want to be born again?”

145 said yes. He then asked them to stand. It was amazing to see that many of them stood.

So yeah. I took all the good stuff from every future person who will post So I’ll end at there. :3

What did I learn? Pretty much the same message their book is preaching: the teen years are the time to start preparing for your future and to start hard things for God. Not doing hard things doesn’t glorify God. I never thought of it before, but working on defeating areas of sin is a hard thing. sure it’s like, “duh” but I mean, I never thought of it that way. I mostly thought that the hard things they were talking about were projects and stuff or simple chores around the house.

So yeah. Long post. Feel free to trim it down if you want. But that’s about all I have to say. :3

Cheeburger was great afterwards.

!

This’ll be short, I promise.

They’re last “point” was pretty sweet. They had all 3,000+ people do that thing where you clap/snap/stomp and it sounds like rain. They’re point was that just snapping/clapping/etc on it’s own doesn’t seem that significant. But when we all did it together, it sounded like a violent storm. In the end, I think they said that if we all do hard things together they’ll have a bigger impact than if it were just one person.

I’m done. :3

I don’t really know how anyone can expound upon what Daniel already said (way to go Daniel! Great post btw…). However, I do want to say that the Rebelution was an amazing conference, and completely made me rethink the way I was spending my time. Through it, God has been working in my life.