4 weeks down already - crazy!

Suprise suprise, we have had another amazing week :D

This week the lectures were on 'relationships'.
On the first day we were really getting encouraged strongly that it starts with God. To have healthy relationships with others we need to seek God first. God is love and in that comes all other characteristics like mercy, patience, grace, generosity, selflessness, and all things like that that make a healthy, lasting relationship.

"Our relationship with others will only go as deep as our relationship with God."

During the week, we talked about about dwelling in the house of the Lord.
"Imagine if you had a friend that when you were with them, they would talk all the time and you couldn't get a word in."

It is good for us to as we spend time with God to meditate on who God is, instead of talking all the time - take time to think about the characeristics of God and dwell on the goodness of God through the ways he has helped us out. God is worthy of all our time - but that is especially hard to give up sometimes if there is something that you really want to do but God is asking you to do something else for him.

As an illustration of relationships in our life was compared to like a building:
"God is our rock and FOUNDATION of the building. Next you build the WALLS on the building which is our relationship with God, and the INTERIOR is like our relationships with others.  You dont have to do these step by step to get good relationships, but God works on these things in you at the same time in a way - when you let him help you.

Another thing that came up this week was 'pride' again.
This has been a huge revelation in my life - pride is the source of all sin-I wasn't convinced at first about this ... but now I believe all sin does come from some source of pride.
For example: It is prideful to not believe who God says you because you're saying that God is wrong and you know more then him
It is prideful to punish yourself more when you have failed rather then accepting God's forgiveness, and mercy and grace, because it is like you are saying what Jesus did was not enough for you.

I am not trying to be condemning by the way...

There are so many different forms of pride, and I know for me God's mercy has been a huge blessing to me for a while now. I have been recognising more about how much I really need it and then his forgiveness and then  his help to overcome the pride I feel inside and his strength not to walk in it. God has been so good to me everyday and I know I am not the only one because he is good to everyone!

We looked into King David and in Acts 13:22 which says: "......I have found David son of Jesse, a man after my own heart, he will do everything I want him to do"
But when you look at King David life, he did so many things wrong like commiting adultery and murder amongst others. But King David would come before the Lord brokenhearted and repent of his wrongs; sometimes he still had consequences, but in order to be made right with God we do need to face those consequences.
He also was contrite and sincere about what he had done wrong when he repented, and he was open about his wrongs; when you bring sin into light the darkness must flee.
And he brought restitution to the circumstance if there was an action that needed to be taken to restore the situation.

We were also encouraged not to push away our trials all the time but (James 1:2-4) "Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, ³ because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. ⁴ Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything."

"Don't wish away the trials we face, but use them to press into God more", and know that you can't walk through them the way you can with God. Sometimes God allows us to be tested because he wants to teach us something and stretch our faith, but other times we can face trials that we don't have just because we have made silly choices.
We dont always have to struggle, and we don't have to seek trials so we can press into God more, but in those times where we do feel God is wanting to teach us something through those trials, count it pure Joy because when we stay strong to the end of it our faith will be increased and we will trust in God more.

This week we also watched a part of a series of a marriage DVD about understanding the way guys and girls think, because God made us different for a reason and when we don't understand the differences, you can get into stupid arguments over nothing.
Another thing we talked about is marriage and sex. we talked about how when you get married, a switch doesn't get flicked and everything becomes good together, but we need to prepare ourselves for that day by learning to walk in righteousness now, and learning patience and generosity and selflessness and grace now, and all the other things you need to know and when you get married you keep learning these things - but basically preperation starts now.

There were so many good things in this week and I have only said a little bit about them :)

A cool thing that was said was the definition of 'insanity':
INSANITY: Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

Sometimes things in our life require us to make a choice to change to get a different result.

We had a really good ministry time to this week and we just got prayer for the area's of pride and dwelling in the house of the Lord and other area's that were spoken on throughout the week and it was really cool again to see God working further in the lives of everyone!

One other cool thing that was said was:
"Be the one and stop looking for the one"

_______________________________________________________________________________

Outside of lectures today we had a 'Sunday Funday' at Naomi's house and we had pancakes and just hung out and played games - I ate waaaaaaaaaaay to much this morning...:)
And then after the 'Sunday Funday' a group of us went to the beach and we played rugby in the water and it was really fun - we also went swimming and the water was so good!

It may sound like we get alot of free time here and we kind of do , but at the same time we do have to take time throughout the week to work on our workbooks and journals and we are strongly encouraged to spend our own time with God because a huge amount of growth comes from what time we put into God on our own as well!
I think and strongly believe that our quiet times with God strongly effect what we get out of each lecture we have!



I hope you enjoy this blog :)
God bless