Category Archives: YWAM Kona – CDTS Sept 2014

Week 9 – YWAM Kona, At the Crossroads – Evangelism

With Thanksgiving and Black Friday eating up two of our days this week our speaker, Danny Lehmann, packed a lot into just 3 days. Danny Lehmann lives here on the Big Island, and travels extensively, preaching the gospel and teaching on evangelism, missions, and the disciplined life. He is the Dean of the College of Christian Ministries, YWAM International’s teaching arm. Teaching us from his latest book “Beautiful Feet: Steps to a Lifestyle of Evangelism” and the Acts of the Apostles. Danny shared that in evangelism there is always a messenger, a message, a motive and a method, he unpacked each of these in great depth revealing five levels under each. We talked a lot about the importance of seed planting, watering and reaping, and the need to develop relationship and walk alongside. For the Cursillistas reading this, he built on both our Action statement to “make a friend be a friend and bring your friend to Christ”, and our talk about the Study and Evangelization of our Environment, but with great enthusiasm coming from his experiences in world-wide missions and he has us pumped up and ready for sharing our faith with a greater boldness.
Our study of Acts 17 saw Paul using 5 examples of how to share the gospel in 5 different places. Paul reasoned, explained, proved, proclaimed, persuaded and they joined, in Thessalonika, in Berea and 3 locations in Athens; the synagogue, the marketplace and the Areopagus (Mars Hill).

Some takeaways from the teaching:
* You don’t have to become a Christian to be saved, you just have to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.
* In their extremes Calvinists become lazy & Armenians become neurotic.
* Quantity causes quality to be diluted.
* Do your best, pray that it is blessed and let God do the rest.
* Good disciples make good disciples.
* Too many Christians live in Romans 7 we need to launch them into Romans 8.

On Thursday we took part in the campus Thanksgiving Celebration.

It was a great expression of gratitude that began with a time of worship and praise followed by Darlene Cunningham sharing about many of the great things God has done through the first 54 years of YWAM, especially here in Kona. She related one story from the early days where there was nothing to serve for Thanksgiving Dinner and after praying for a solution to the problem, some ladies from the local Episcopal Church showed up and invited the 150+ YWAMers to Thanksgiving Dinner for free. Loren Cunningham shared the BIG plan for future development of the undeveloped portion of the University of the Nations campus. The area inside the gold box on the map is in existence today the other 3/4 of the land has yet to be developed and will include a 3,500 seat, sound-proofed theatre (noise complaints are common), with IMAX, the Lokahi multi-media studio, K-12 school, classrooms, student and staff housing, workshops and storage, an athletic park with tennis and basketball courts, football field & swimming pool.

So, we all set off on a prayer walk around the outside of the property, stopping to pray for all the expansion plans, for funding to be released, for students to come and for the world to be changed. Walking the 1.5 miles cemented the “bigness” of the vision and the need for God to continue supplying miracles reinforcing the simple fact that this organization is founded on supernatural principles and cannot exist without God.

Then on Thursday evening we picked up a rental car with plans to head around the northern coast road over to the east side with Jon & Joyce, two of our suite mates. The Big Island has 11 of the 13 climate zones that occur on the Earth, we were about to travel through 8 of them. Along the way we visited some historic sites, some scenic points, the towns of Waimea and Hilo,along the coast some were very windy, some very wet. Near Hilo we went to the Hawaii Tropical Botanical Gardens, we walked down through the spectacularly colourful and lush tropical rain forest which was in stark contrast to the very black and white scene that was waiting for us when Onomea Bay came into view. It was hard to believe as we looked out to sea that behind was such greenery and colour.

We stayed overnight at the Hilo Seaside Hotel, then enjoyed a relaxing morning, well, I was out walking with my camera early, then breakfast at Ken’s House of Pancakes

followed by a drive over the Saddle Road back to Kona. Sunday morning we took Andy & Beth to Living Stones Church then down the coast to Kealakekua Bay & Captain Cook, Ho’Okena Beach Park and back up to Mauka Meadows coffee estate. A busy weekend but fun to relax and get away a bit further away from the base for a while.

Wildlife this week:

DSC_0561_2

Black-crowned Night Heron

Rooster

Bird of Paradise

That’s all for this week, take care, be blessed and be a blessing, A&G.

Week 8 – YWAM Kona, At the Crossroads – Missions

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This weeks teaching by Ralph and Donna Bromley from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, was on Missions. They did their Crossroads DTS back in 1980, then worked with YWAM for 7 years. Since then they have been involved in missions, as a mission pastor in Kelowna, in intercessory prayer, they are now with Hope for the Nations. Another week of excellent teaching, this time based on my second favourite scripture passage,

Ralph Bromley

“He has shown you, O man, what is good;
And what does the Lord require of you
But to do justly,
To love mercy,
And to walk humbly with your God” Micah 6:8

We looked at this scripture from the perspective that we have an ‘an absolute sovereign God’ who says that “Righteousness and Justice are the foundations of [His] throne” Psalm 89:14. We also recognized that God’s way is often opposite to the ways of the world, as we can see when we compare Satan’s upward plan ‘to be like God’ in Isaiah 14:13 with Jesus’s downward life, as described in Philippians 2:5. So with the right foundation, and God’s way in mind, when we looked at Micah 6:8 it was easy to see that to fulfill God’s requirement we need to walk humbly with our God Praise before we can love mercy and do justice. When we humble ourselves through prayer and worship, we develop a character more like God, then we can see beyond our own little world into God’s heart for mercy and justice. Once we get the humble character then the attitude of our heart begins to align itself to God’s heart, and we start to recognize other’s pain and suffering and we offer mercy by providing Philanthropic Justice. As we begin to invest our time and money in an injustice we see God’s posture as a defender of the widows and the orphans, and we move into action; doing justly. The fruit is “Love & Faithfulness go(ing) before you,” Psalm 89:14

Other takeaways from the teaching:

* To be missional is to be who we are and bring that to others.
* The conversation is more important than the answer.
* Missions is a changing landscape, years ago it was a vocation, gone for the rest of their lives in another nation, then short-term with youth, like YWAM, now globalization is…
* Fighting injustice is a team sport, identify an issue, pull in behind someone/something.

There have been many fundraisers going on as we reach the deadlinefor outreach money to be paid. Some are hosting Brazilian BBQs, others cooking up Shish Kebabs, cookies, ice cream, putting on magic shows, etc, but the International Korean DTS has set up an outdoor salon offering massages, pedicures, manicures and haircuts. Glenda had the manicure and pedicure, black and silver! I helped out by getting a haircut.

My Work Duty was spent mostly in the swimming pool, which has been under ~~constr~~ um, destruction since before we arrived. There were two seemingly very long days of pulling weeds for Jesus.HereLars is teaching Deborah, our Malay classmate how to use the jack-hammer. Note: Sorry I am not in any of the photos it must be because I am never working but taking pictures 🙂 Oh, and I missed work duty on Thursday as my small group went sea kayaking and we didn’t make it back in time for work, fortunately our performance appraisals had already been completed and handed in!

It has taken just 8 weeks but I finally got to snap some photos of Glenda dusting books in the library. (Is that Katai I see on the shelf?)

Thursday night at Ohana Court included an excellent teaching message on God’s understanding of adoption (click here for the video) by Johnny Gillespie, who is an adoptive father and a YWAM Kona DTS leader. The video is a couple of hours long, it begins with people arriving, we sat on the left of the middle aisle if you happen to see us. The worship starts about 15 minutes in, then around 40 minutes some families share their adoption stories, the main talk starts at about 1 hr 12 minutes in.

Wildlife this week, starting with the insects and birds…

…and plant-life…

…and don’t forget to check out “George the Gecko” video on the Instagram link on the sidebar.

Next week is a short one, American Thanksgiving on Thursday gives us a 4-day weekend, we will be travelling over to Hilo on Friday with our Seattle friends and suite-mates, Jon and Joyce Brooks.

Until next week, be blessed and be a blessing, and believe,
love, A&G

P.S. Go Stamps, Go!

Week 7 – YWAM Kona, At the Crossroads – Deliverance and Spiritual Warfare

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“Angels & Demons” by ~~Dan Brown~~ Jesus of Nazareth

The Rite

It has been quite a struggle, this week, to decide how to share the teaching we have heard. In some ways we feel like we sat through a few horror movies, and yet, we both feel a great peace, a new freedom and sure knowledge that we are entering into a much more exciting future, as better ambassadors and more proficient soldiers for Christ.

This week, Dave Bryan, of Church of Glad Tidings, Yuba City, CA, presented a convincing picture of the battle between good and evil that is going on around us. It is a battle that most of us in the western world are desensitized to, unaware of, entertained by or in denial of its reality. For many in the rest of the world, dealing with shamans, witches, warlocks, vampires, werewolves, etc. the spirit world is not a thing of the movies but a very real part of daily life. Even within our enlightened western world evil is real and people do inexplicable things, school shootings, for example. Recently, CNN reported a story of satanic activity in Oklahoma, which suggested that the Roman Catholic church is hurriedly training exorcists to deal with a rapidly increasing need. One of Dave’s first introductions to spiritual warfare was ministering to a young lady who had been groomed to carry the anti-christ, by Anton LaVey (founder of the Church of Satan and author of the Satanic Bible.)

Dave’s teaching was full of examples illustrating scripture, I think I will leave further details and just offer a few takeaways… (Comments section is open :-))

*The Bible is our training manual and Jesus is our example, if we aren’t doing what Jesus did, maybe, we aren’t doing it right.
*If you were living to the full potential of your life everyone would know about it and they would think they had met Jesus Christ.
*Even kids cartoons are more open about supernatural phenomena and spiritual realities than most churches.
*Anything that is boring is not God: the Revelation of Jesus Christ, the last book in the Bible, talks about lightning coming out of His Chair!!
*Ready – fire – aim!
*”The great enlightenment might be better called the great endarkenment”

One of the biggest thoughts from the last couple of weeks is that we are not living at our full potential. In some ways we knew that years ago and it is, in part, why we are here at YWAM taking the Crossroads DTS, but the reality of what it really means to live with the power of Christ in us is changing.

As for the rest of the week, the University held a Campus Fair which high-lighted some of the second-level courses and ministry opportunities available after DTS. After we visited the School of Photography, School of Illustration, Voice for the Voiceless, Word By Heart, Steps of Justice and the Discipleship Bible School together, Glenda had to go to library duty, so I went off to Appropriate Technology Village, part of the Science & Technology Department where there are several interesting projects in place to aid developing countries.

Work duty for me involved filling holes with rocks, but we had a lot of extra hands this week, a family from the Marshall Islands who live in one of the units came out in force and helped a lot. Glenda continued to work in the library cleaning and organizing the books and helping students find what they need.