We started off the day a little differently than usual. Instead of going straight in to Quite Time, we first listed prayer points for the India and Poland teams, which were then to be used in the Base prayer time after Quiet Time. Then we had a shorter Quiet Time, and then we met for the Base prayer time.
After that we had to get in to our small groups, and list all the previous memory verses. The group with the most correct memory verses was promised a pizza party. We listed as many verses as we could, submitted our paper, and waited. The result came in a few minutes later: we had won!....and so had every other group! The leaders then announced that the pizza party will be for everyone, next Saturday.
Our second lecture on Missions started soon after that. We resumed with more on worldviews, and the idea that any worldview must explain why there is good and evil in the world. The Biblical Christian worldview does just that: God created the people for a relationship with Him, and a relationship requires freedom to choose. Man has chosen to not enter in to the relationship, and therefore chooses his own path, which leads to destruction. Jesus is standing at the door of our hearts and knocking. All we need to do is open up to Him, and we can start the relationship we were made for.
We then looked at the message of Jesus, as shown in Matthew 4:17 and 23, 5-8, 13-14, and 24, and Acts 1:3. The message is: The Kingdom of God. That there is healing, forgiveness, and God's blessings available to us now. Jesus message was about his Kingdom coming to Earth. It wasn't the Kingdom of power the Jews were expecting, but it was what was promised by God.
Later we talked about how in Revelation, it promises that people from every people group will be represented in the group of believers at the end of the age (Revelation 5:9 and Revelation 7:9). This is a message of hope for us: the Great Commission will be completed: people from all nations will hear the Gospel, and have the opportunity of responding to God's call on their life.
We finished off talking about the history of missions in the church, and how missionary organisations, such as YWAM, seem to have been around since the early days of the church (for example, in Acts 13 Paul forms a group of missionaries in Antioch, but none of them were from Antioch).
The lecture was really good, and inspired me to go out and do my part in completing the Great Commission.
After lunch I wrote my sermon to be given in India, then in the evening the men's small group had a surprise trip to a local Italian restaurant for our final meeting, where I enjoyed a calzone pizza.
It has been another good day here on the YWAM DTS course. It is slowly dawning on me that I'll be out of the country for two whole months from next week. It is quite incredible really: at the start of this year, I didn't even know about this course, and now I've gone through so much on it, and there is a whole lot more to follow.
