So. This weeks was a little different than the first one when it comes to lectures. The subject was Strength Finders, and we were supposed to learn about spiritual foundations and building "the house of God" on top of our foundation and then learning about our strengths and what they mean and how we can develop them etc. Before the school started they made us take a psycologic test that told us what our five strengths were. Mine were Empathy, Communication, Strategic, Developer and Responsibility. During this week's lectures we were supposed to study eveyone's strengths and learn more about them, but on wednesday our lecturer Dave decided that we should do testimonies and ministry, cos he felt like some people had baggage that needed to be dealt with before we could start "building". So we spent all wednesday and thursday mornings listening to people sharing about stuff they struggled with, confessing stuff and getting delivered from stuff. It was powerful. I'm not sure how much of it is appropriate to be shared here, but i guess i can just mention a couple of things without giving any names. So we had this one guy who used to be a drug dealer tell his life story and at times i thought it was a movie cos it just sounded so amazing. He's not a christian but he's doing dts and he's definitely getting there... Just last night he gave away 900 dollars to some homeless guy and a lady who had cancer or something. Some people confessed idolatry and distrust towards god and sexual impturity etc. One guy told about his addition to pornography and after praying for him we had all the guys stand up in one line and all the girls standing in another line facing the guys, and we passed a microphone around and girls and guys would apologize for sinning against each other. It was powerful.
That was friday, and on the same night all MAD people had a movie night. Our school leader Noah had selected a film that he hadn't seen, but since it was PG-13 he thought it couldn't be that bad. The film was Year One, and a lot of people were very excited to see it. So we watched like half of it, and it turned out to be quite inappropriate, especially after what had happened in the morning. So Noah stopped it in the middle and we had a discussion about the film, which was super cool. We talked about world views (which btw is our subject for next week) and how a PG-13 film could have such provocative stuff in it. Ironically, later Noah told us that he's watched the rest of the film with his wife and after the point where he'd stopped the film it had become totally clean, all the dirty jokes were gone and there was actually a pretty good moral message at the end. So we might watch the rest of the film some day. But nobody minded, cos the discussion we had about it was so awesome.
On saturday morning we had a bible study forum thing, where we discussed about the Bible and what makes it real and true and how we can be sure etc. It was really cool to dig deeper into what we believed and why we believed so. I personally came to the conclusion that even though the Bible and it's stories are historically accurate, without the Holy Spirit working through it it's just a sotrybook. Just like no one comes to Christ without the spirit of God working in them, nobody can really believe in the Bible if they leave Holy Spirit out of it. And debating with non-christiand about what is true and what is not is useless, cos no scientific information is ever gonna change the way people feel inside them. The power to change hearts lies in our actions, loving our neighbour as ourselves. Of course we need to tell people eventually, but jumping headfirst into a debate with an atheist isn't gonna help anyone. So on that note, and also out of Noah's encouragement, me and a couple of friends decided to go interview people on their vies about God and Christianity etc. Our purpose was not to tell them what we thought, but to actually learn what people thought about stuff. And it was super intresting. We had a videocamera with us, and hopefully i could get a video of it on facebook or something. One thing that was really obvious, was that people weren't really sure what they believed in. Most people thought that there was a God, or just a higher power, but they couldn't define it more. There was a christian girl who wasn't sure if she was going to heaven cos she didn't think that she was a good person. Someone said that they didn't believe in God but they did believe in heaven and hell. And old lady told us she couldn't live without God but when we asked her what makes the difference in a person's life that decides whether they go to heaven or hell, she didn't know. A lot of people thought that the Bible was too long, unreadable and that it should be updated. We might do the same thing another time, cos it truly was enlightening. I truly recommend it for everyone, whoever you are and wherever you live. Cos oftentimes we christians think we know, but then we really have no clue, cos we don't think about it. Kinda like what those non-christians thought about God and stuff. They think they know what they believe in, but when you ask them straight, they have no clue.
That was friday, and on the same night all MAD people had a movie night. Our school leader Noah had selected a film that he hadn't seen, but since it was PG-13 he thought it couldn't be that bad. The film was Year One, and a lot of people were very excited to see it. So we watched like half of it, and it turned out to be quite inappropriate, especially after what had happened in the morning. So Noah stopped it in the middle and we had a discussion about the film, which was super cool. We talked about world views (which btw is our subject for next week) and how a PG-13 film could have such provocative stuff in it. Ironically, later Noah told us that he's watched the rest of the film with his wife and after the point where he'd stopped the film it had become totally clean, all the dirty jokes were gone and there was actually a pretty good moral message at the end. So we might watch the rest of the film some day. But nobody minded, cos the discussion we had about it was so awesome.
On saturday morning we had a bible study forum thing, where we discussed about the Bible and what makes it real and true and how we can be sure etc. It was really cool to dig deeper into what we believed and why we believed so. I personally came to the conclusion that even though the Bible and it's stories are historically accurate, without the Holy Spirit working through it it's just a sotrybook. Just like no one comes to Christ without the spirit of God working in them, nobody can really believe in the Bible if they leave Holy Spirit out of it. And debating with non-christiand about what is true and what is not is useless, cos no scientific information is ever gonna change the way people feel inside them. The power to change hearts lies in our actions, loving our neighbour as ourselves. Of course we need to tell people eventually, but jumping headfirst into a debate with an atheist isn't gonna help anyone. So on that note, and also out of Noah's encouragement, me and a couple of friends decided to go interview people on their vies about God and Christianity etc. Our purpose was not to tell them what we thought, but to actually learn what people thought about stuff. And it was super intresting. We had a videocamera with us, and hopefully i could get a video of it on facebook or something. One thing that was really obvious, was that people weren't really sure what they believed in. Most people thought that there was a God, or just a higher power, but they couldn't define it more. There was a christian girl who wasn't sure if she was going to heaven cos she didn't think that she was a good person. Someone said that they didn't believe in God but they did believe in heaven and hell. And old lady told us she couldn't live without God but when we asked her what makes the difference in a person's life that decides whether they go to heaven or hell, she didn't know. A lot of people thought that the Bible was too long, unreadable and that it should be updated. We might do the same thing another time, cos it truly was enlightening. I truly recommend it for everyone, whoever you are and wherever you live. Cos oftentimes we christians think we know, but then we really have no clue, cos we don't think about it. Kinda like what those non-christians thought about God and stuff. They think they know what they believe in, but when you ask them straight, they have no clue.
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