Just the Beginning!: Something Beautiful

Apple Computers dominate our room!

This last week was my second last week here in Hawaii as I leave for Colombia on this next Monday (Dec. 12)! The lecture was on making God known. Ywam's two main goals are 'To know God and to make Him known', so as the last 8 weeks we have been learning a lot on who God is and how to develop our relationships with Him, these last two weeks are training us on how to make God known to the nations in a way of somewhat preparing us for outreach! The highlight of this week's lectures for me was the worship that we had. Being that it was corporate week (all the dts's in the Ohana court together for the lectures), we got to have worship every morning. The lectures were also really good as they further encouraged me on how simple the gospel really is and how important it is for people to hear. One of the speakers went over a few scriptures that represents the gospel clearly and then got us to practice it on one another.
Here's the scriptures:
Romans 3:23 - For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
Romans 6:23 - For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord
Romans 5:8 - But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Romans 10:9 - That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord", and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
Romans 6:28 - You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.

The fact that the gospel is simple is great, but it doesn't mean that everyone will accept it and receive it when you go up to the and tell them it. I have always felt that it is important to build relationships with people and show them that you truly care about them before you just go ahead and try and 'convert' them. I don't think that is right, and a lot of the time when christians try and get around the hard part of becoming apart of someone's life and actually investing time into others lives and just trying to change them, it turns people away.
Something I would like prayer for is that during outreach would be that I know that there will be times where it is necessary to invest time into people's lives to show love and represent Jesus, but because of lack of time there will also be times where we only have time to share our story and then share with them the gospel. This is something foreign to me and kinda makes me uncomfortable, but I would just like prayer in that I will know the right time to speak up and the right time to just show love by my actions. I know that God will ask me to do things that are out of my comfort zone, and I really just want to be obedient to him in the things he asks me to do without hesitation. I absolutely know that this is a period in my life for growth and that once I just step out and do the things he asks me to do, it will become easier and easier.

Outside of lectures this week was also pretty eventful. As we are all getting prepared to leave for outreach, Christmas came early for our class! This saturday we had our class Christmas party filled with decorating of Christmas cookies, a talent show, and Christmas story skits. It was a lot of fun and all the parties and fun activities that our class does really shows how much of a family our class has become. It has made this period of holidays a bit easier being away from home (Although I do miss home!, especially when I saw all the decorations in the Ohana court one evening this week for a service).