Pastor Louie Giglio left the delegates at the Desiring God National Conference in Minnesota astonished Friday night as he played audio tapes containing sounds of heavenly bodies that had both rhythm and melody “to praise their Creator”.

Speaking on the theme of this year’s Desiring God annual conference, “Finish the Mission: For the Joy of All Peoples, Bringing the Gospel to the Unreached and Unengaged,” the Passion Movement founder showed just a glimpse of God’s greatness to stress that the call for mission can be understood best in light of the One who is calling.

“I am perplexed why the universe is so big,” Giglio, pastor of Passion City Church in Atlanta, said at the opening session of the three-day conference in Minneapolis. “It’s way too big if it’s a place just for you and me. It is oversized.”

Giglio showed pictures of galaxies millions of light years away from us to show the unimaginable expanse of the universe.

Astronomers, he said, struggle with the purpose and function of the universe. But the universe, he added, “is doing what it is made to do… It is praising God in a staggering magnitude.”

Giglio, also a song writer, then played the sounds recorded with highly advanced electromagnetic telescope programmes by scientists. One sounded like a percussion instrument, and the other like the church organ. Then he played the whale sound under the water.

When Giglio played the tapes together, “un-doctored and unedited,” it sounded like a symphony. That’s what it is, he said, “the symphony of God’s praise from all creation.” He then led the audience to sing Chris Tomlin’s “How great is our God” with the “symphony of the universe” playing in the background.

The pastor said the psalmist also talked about the sun, the moon and the stars praising God. That was not just poetic, he said. “Stars also sing.”

“What blows my mind is that Scriptures says God spoke and the universe came into being… So God, by His voice, made a universe,” he said, adding that He is the one who is asking, “Who shall we send, and who will go for us? … He wants to know … The galaxy-breathing God would like to know.”

Giglio also said God didn’t need us. “God is a God who doesn’t need anything or anyone. He is big and powerful … and amazing, and He is asking the question [“Who shall go…?”]. And that’s why it’s crazy ... He didn’t ask … Einstein … to help create the universe. He made it just the way He wanted.”

But God is “choosing to invite you into His glorious plan… God is on the move… He is going to do it,” Giglio said. “It’s more of, ‘This is what I am doing, and I would like for you to come and be part of it.’ He is going to all the unreached people of the world.”

The pastor concluded that if we realised who God is, we would not continue to do our own thing, which is “trivial nothing” in comparison with God’s global purposes. “Would you say tonight, ‘Here, I am, send me?’”