Updates from Ed Ross

Today marked the 25th year of King's Lodge being part of YWAM. There
was a big celebration in the evening to celebrate.

Before that there were some more seminars. I'd like to talk about the
now, but I'm too tired.

Last night's evening meeting, which took place after my blog entry, was centered on the importance of the Word of God in our lives. As we had learned last week in the Bible teaching week, the Word is Jesus. He was the pre-existing Word of God before time and before the universe began. The most memorable section of the talk was when Loren Cunningham, the founder of YWAM who was giving the talk and who has been in public ministry for about 50 years, recited from memory every book in the Bible, and showed how Jesus could be seen in every one of them. It was a wonder to behold. This man has worked his whole life to the glory of God, and has such a deep passion for Him and His word that he could so easily list off all 66 books. He also talked about the history of Christianity in Hawaii and Norway. Those were also quite inspirational stories, worth checking out if you can.

This morning started out a little differently to other mornings at the Conference (and most other YWAM mornings, actually). We got to have a lie-in, waking up at 8am, and then we were taken in to Nuneaton to have a full Englis breakfast! This was then followed by an hour's free time in the town. It was quite funny: they have a row of shops where just about every mobile phone company had an outlet. I guess they must have fierce competition some times!

After that we got to the conference. Today we heard about how when we come into an organisation such as YWAM, it is OK to think short-term for a while, but eventually we need to think about our long term vision. A calling into YWAM is a life-calling, not a job. The session was actually focusing on family and finances. The most important lessons may have been: be teachable, and ask for help. Also, don't say anything resenting the sacrifices of your ministry, just celebrate the blessings.

Most of this week's talks were meant to have been given by Loren's wife and YWAM cofounder Darlene. Unfortunately she could not be with us due to a family situation. It turns out YWAM has it's own video communication network called Genesis. Through this, Darlene was able to speak to us from Hawaii this afternoon! Before I saw it in action, I was thinking "why not just use skype?", but once I'd seen it in action and realised it only cut out once in the entire presentation, and only for a couple of seconds, and the sound and video were pretty decent quality all the way through, I came to appreciate Genesis a lot.

In the evening, Loren spoke again. This time using Mark 8:34-38 as his base point:

And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? For what can a man give in return for his soul? For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels."

Loren talked about how we should consider the rights we need to face giving up for the benefits of freedom, fulfillment, a completion of our ministry and a focus on Jesus:
* freedom
* money
* family (but focusing on the fact that God wants to keep family together, not tear them apart)
* reputation
* food
* fashion
* our own beds (when on mission - you can't keep coming home every night!)
* the lives of others (not in the killing them sence, but you may have to leave relationships behind.

It came down to the fact the without Christ, we have nothing, but with Christ, we actually have eternal life, and real relationships can last beyond death. Loren told many stories to illustrate his points, including one about how his Dad had to leave his rich relatives to serve God, and how he was cut off from their life. He went on to talk about how he had to go through a similar event, and he said "I thought it was easy: my Dad had done it". This got me thinking about how if The Father could send Jesus as a sacrifice for us, what couldn't I sacrifice for Him.

When we got back to the church we are staying at, our leader passed around some snacks provided by the conference for us, which was nice.

Thanks for reading. Please feel free to add a comment to this or any other post.

"Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright ©2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved."

Today we learned more about YWAM, and more about what the Bible says too.

A couple of interesting things from today's teaching:

1. The second part of The Ten Commandments, about interaction with others, are not a disconnected list of "Do's and Dont's". They are a list of ways to choose life, and not deny the lives of others.
2. God never says he was the "God of Joseph", as he says he is the "God of Abraham", and others. This seems to be as Joseph abused his position of power, and enslaved the Egyptian population (which came back to bite the Israelites later), when he should have sought God's guidance in dealing with the famine to come.

We also had another meeting about India, but it was more of a social meeting, without much more information given.

It has been nice to meet a few more YWAMers, and hope to talk to some more while I'm here. You may notice this post is coming a bit earlier in the day than normal - we haven't actually finished the day yet, but I want to get this done while I can get online on a laptop! I hope you are having a good week.

Today at the conference we learned how we should be co-creators with God. He states his creativity as his first attribute in the Bible, and he also makes new things today, through us. We heard about many technological breakthroughs that are being given for use by Christian groups such as YWAM to help those in need.

We also learned more about what YWAM is doing around the world. In a couple of words: a lot! Check out some of their activities on their web sites. If you are interested in anything from dance to medicine, there is probably a YWAM course that will focus on that subject for you.

It's been another tiring day, so I'm almost ready for bed. Have a great week.

Today I got back to Holmsted Manor and just a matter of hours later I
was off to King's Lodge in the middle of the country for the YWAM DNA
conference.

The conference started off with a talk given by the founder of YWAM,
which was quite inspirational.

I'm still very tired, and now wanting to go to sleep.

Today I spent most of the day with my girlfriend. It was a very nice day.

Today we carried on reading Acts in our quiet times. I finished the book today, so continued reading the second book I need to write a report on now that I've finished Blue Like Jazz. This second book is "Spiritual Warfare for every Christian" by Dean Sherman. So far, I'm liking it. The subject is given a very practical and down-to-earth view which reminds the Christian reader that they have authority and victory in Jesus.

We then resumed our Prayer For The Nations. Here we prayed again about the persecution of Christians in India.

We then continued our studies on The Bible, where we finished off the Old Testament, and started looking at the New Testament. The main point was that The Law was given through Moses, but Grace and Truth was given through Jesus. I liked what the teacher said about the gospels: they are more like a portrait than a photograph: they all feature the truth about Jesus, just from different angles. We had the finish off the teaching today, as our weekend is Friday and Saturday this week as we are going to a YWAM conference next week starting on Sunday. It would have been nice to have gone through all the New Testament books too, but there just wasn't time. We got the main point though: God loves you.

After Community Care I packed my bags for the conference and for going to Portsmouth later in the night for a stag party on Saturday (and to see my girlfriend). Then after tea I went to the first part of a final seminar on The Bible, where we started talking about a Acts (which is why we had been reading it this week). Then I left o get my things ready to go to Portsmouth.

The journey was very smooth, and involved meeting my parents (who gave me a lift to the station from Holmsted Manor), which was very nice.

Thanks for being a part of my journey through this YWAM DTS course.

This morning I read more of Acts in Quiet Time. Today it struck me how God had really set Paul up with everything he needed for his life telling people about Jesus: he knew the scriptures, so he could show other Jews how Jesus was the promised one from that; he was a Roman citizen, so he had certain rights that he wouldn't have done otherwise. He was the right man at the right time.

After that we continued with our study on The Bible, and looked at almost all the rest of the books of the Old Testament. The teacher has real books with the names of each of the books of the Bible written on them, and after he talks about each book, he places them on a table in chronological order. This is quite useful, as it shows which books are talking about the same moments in history. Reading the Old Testament could be a bit frustrating if you didn't know some books just repeate a lot of the same information! We also had an interesting discussion on why God said to destroy certain cities by force.

After lunch and Community Care, I helped set up the dining hall with speakers and a mixing desk for a concert held here tonight. It was fun (for me) to get to work with some musical cables. I like that type of thing! The cases the microphones came in reminded me of the type at my Portsmouth church, which was nice.

We had our next meeting about the India outreach after that. We spoke about unity, and prayed for each other. We also shared some pictures we thought God was giving us, and discussed them too.

After dinner I was asked if I wanted to be on the security/stewarding team for the concert, so I put on a few more layers of clothing, and went. I stayed outside for a couple of hours or so, directing cars towards the car park. Once no more cars were coming, the team stayed outside and talked about various things, such as the interesting things that have happened on the other team members' outreaches. It was an interesting, yet cold time.

I've been here almost 6 weeks now! This YWAM DTS course is fantastic.

Today we studied the first five books of the Bible, and took part in our cell groups.

The day started off, as ever, with our Quiet Time. Again, I read through more of the book of Acts. It is often said that although the name is often given as the Acts of the Apostles, it really is much more the Acts of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is in every page of the book, and in every encounter between believers and non-believers. He teaches, speaks, guides, instructs, heals, and does so much for so many in the book. A life live for God without the Holy Spirit is a bit like having a wind-up torch, but never having it wound up. You'd be missing out on so much.

After Quiet Time we met as a base to pray for the needs of a new YWAM base in Leeds, in the north of England. A couple who are wanting to start a base there came and explained the situation, and helped us pray for the main needs. It was quite good for me to be a part of this. I've known for a while that God has a plan for Leeds - a friend from university went up there after they graduated, and it seems some good work has been going on there.

Then we moved on to our next lecture on The Bible. We covered the first five books of the Bible - The Law. I certainly learned a lot today, and it was great to be a part of this lecture. The speaker certainly knows his stuff, and helps us all see more clearly what the Biblw is talking about. For example, when one of the laws is talking about not boiling baby animals in their mother's milk, instead of taking this to extremes and having separate meat and dairy sections of resteraunts, we should look at the context: there were other religions around at the time the law was given which suggested that cooking in this way would magically make more food appear. The prohibition was against the magical ideas. It was also good to see how Genesis was divided - four main events, then four main people people. Most importantly, it was emphasised that how we look at the law now should be based on what Jesus said: love God and love your neighbour as yourself: so many of the Old Testament laws would still stand, but others are not as meaningful when it comes to loving God or others. I'm looking forward to tomorrow's lecture to see what else we are taught.

As usual, after lunch (another nice curry), we took part in the standard Community Care activites, then I helped tidy our room in preparation for this evening's mens' small group. In small group we prayed for each other, talked about how we thought the ladies surprise evening went yesterday, and sung more worship to God.

It has been yet another good day. I'm so glad i'm here to learn in this lecture phase, and am interested to see what will happen on outreach to India! Thanks for reading. Feel free to add a comment to this or any other blog entry.