I think I experienced heaven here on earth at Gather25.

I grew up reading and hearing that heaven would include nonstop praise and worship. A teenage Natasia didn’t think that would be all that fun. Growing up, my family attended some kind of church gathering at least 3 times a week. There was a Bible study on Wednesday or Friday, a special event on Saturday, and then not one, but two services on Sunday at two different churches. Being a teenager and always being in some kind of church service that wasn’t really geared towards a teenager made “nonstop praise and worship” seem very boring and unpleasant.

Three months before I turned 16, my dad was tragically killed in a car accident. He was a man of God so I knew he would go to heaven. The years after his death, I found myself thinking more and more about heaven as I wondered what his life is like now. As I got older, I found a church home, developed my own relationship with God, and began a lifelong walk with Him that made me shift my thoughts about what heaven would be like. I started to think that maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to have Hillsong United or Elevation Worship services all day, every day.  

Last week I attended the Gather25 conference in Dallas, TX. To be honest, I had no idea what it was when I signed up for it. I had been wanting to go to some kind of large scale gathering of Christians so I bought a ticket. Even after I bought the ticket, I debated going because the website stated that service would start at 6:00 pm. Dallas from where I live is a bit of a drive, and it would be in the middle of rush hour on a Friday evening. When my CEO booked a client meeting for 3:30 pm, I took it as a sign that I couldn’t go. Client meetings always lead to a debrief afterwards so there would be no way that I could get out of the door in time to make it to Dallas by 6:00 pm. However, the client meeting ended up being really short so the debrief was short as well. I arrived at Watermark Community Church, the North America host church, for Gather25 by 5:30 pm and found a seat in the back to take in whatever it was Gather25 was going to be.

The woman that sat next to me was really chatty. She wanted to know if I grew up in a Christian household. I said I did, but I didn’t develop my own relationship with God until much later in life because I witnessed so many miracles in my life. She told me that she did not grow up in a Christian household and was introduced to God a few years ago by some friends who kept talking to her about Jesus. She was curious about this Jesus and bought herself a Bible and started reading it. This eventually led her to find a church in Austin and now she loves the Lord. The woman behind me chimed in that she grew up in a legalist Christian home so she associated being a Christian with a lot of rules, which made guilt and shame really prevalent in her life. She eventually found a church home, Watermark actually, that shifted her thoughts around Christianity. I marveled how open these women were. I attend church every Sunday and it was rare for my seat neighbors to even say Hi to me, let alone make conversation. I could tell there was something different happening here.

The Gather25 service began in Dallas around 6:30 pm with a pre-service. This included a welcome speech by the founder of Gather25, Jennie Allen, and the host church pastor, Timothy Ateek, followed by worship songs led by Kari Jobe and Cody Carnes to warm us up. At 7:00 pm, the official Gather25 programming kicked off with a children’s song performance, a dance routine, and then of course, praise and worship. There was A LOT of praise and worship throughout the night. There were also testimonies, sermons, stories from believers, and a lot of prayer. In fact, this was the only time I’ve ever seen a Pastor ask a large congregation to get down on their knees (barring no medical condition) to pray on their knees in the church. Apparently Gather25 was some kind of global revival. It was a 25-hour live streamed global Christian conference that included Christians praying and praising God at the exact same time from over 10,000 locations in 183 countries. I felt so blessed to be able to attend the service in person.

At about 10:00 pm, I realized I was hungry. I groaned as I remembered that because I wanted to leave work early that day, I had skipped lunch. This was problematic because I didn’t want to leave Gather25. The Dallas service was going to go on until at least 11:00 pm but I wasn’t sure if I could make it to 11:00 without any food. I was starting to feel a little dizzy and weak. I tried to ignore the hunger pains but when it started to distract me from my worship, I decided to leave. I left the venue at 10:15 pm. That meant I had been in church for 3.5 hours. This shocked me. It did not feel like 3.5 hours had passed. It felt like time stood still. I never once felt like any part of the service was too long or a waste of time. If anything, I sat in anticipation of what would come next. Time, a scarcity that I greatly valued, did not seem that important to me while I was at Gather25.

I will not know what heaven will be like until it’s my time to go but Gather25 in Dallas was probably the closest experience I’ve had to heaven here on earth. In the 3.5 hours I was in the service, I had no worries, no pain, no anxieties, and no distractions. I had no desire to check my phone or social media. In fact, the thought never even crossed my mind. I was so tuned into what was happening that I lost complete track of time. I didn’t want to be anywhere else. I didn’t want to go home. I wanted to stay for as long as I could. I didn’t care if my work was emailing me and needed something from me. Nothing else mattered to me in that moment but my time with God and my family of Believers. I had so much peace and joy. I noticed that I was crying a lot, and so were the people around me. I took time to pray for each person that I could see crying, praying that God made His presence known in their lives and that they feel His love and peace. I was selfless, compassionate, caring, and kind. I felt like I belonged. I had no judgment, only love.

When I left Gather25, I felt like a different person. I felt happier, more joyful, more at peace. I felt like I had clarity on what my purpose was, and the assignment God gave me. The things that I worried about before didn’t seem like real issues anymore. My God is so much bigger than any problem or challenge I had. I felt an immense amount of gratitude. I found myself praying small prayers throughout the night as I drove home. I thanked God for everything. I had small discussions with Him about my life and what was ahead. I felt so, so loved and at peace. I found myself being hyper critical of my text messages and correcting my messages if I felt like I wasn’t being kind or loving in my correspondence. I spoke kindly to everyone. I was encouraging. I paused and thought through what I was saying before I said it. Life just felt different.

The “buzz” of Gather25 eventually wore off as the demands of life and dealing with humans gave way to my own human responses. In my Bible study group last week, we debated why that is. Why did a revival service like Gather25 change me so drastically in a few hours but wear off so quickly? Why didn’t that godly “buzz” last forever? Why did God let me be a regular sinful human again?

I have no idea why God didn’t just divinely keep me in the perfect peace that I was in right after Gather25 but I do know that it’s always possible when I choose Him every day. I can’t attend a Gather25 service everyday but I can dig into His word, live in community with people, praise and worship, and pray every day in my own time, in my own way. I think by living the Gather25 life every day, I also have the ability to impact and influence people that would normally not go to a Gather25 service. I am so grateful for Gather25 for allowing me to experience heaven here on earth.