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."