Week 11: Worldview + Thoughts, Part II: Condemnation

I wasn’t originally excited for this week, but it ended up being super instrumental in something God has been trying to show me and is still showing me today.

Monday

This week’s teacher couldn’t come, so we watched a series of videos for our lessons and then had group discussions. On Monday, the topic was what truth is, why finding the truth is important, and philosophy. It was really interesting but very intellectual and sometimes hard to follow. 

At the Monday night service, we watched a lecture on Islam and I have a much better understanding of it now. 

Tuesday

The important note about Tuesday is that there was an eclipse at 4:55 in the morning, so I got up at 4:45 to see it, but it was cloudy, and then I never got back to sleep. That’s the worst.

Wednesday

Class was awesome on Wednesday. The topic was on politics and history, two subjects that I love to hate, so at first I was dreading it. But it was wonderful. It made me realize the importance of these two subjects, and in turn the importance of everything that God has put in our lives. Politics, history, economics, art, dance, mathematics, biology, literature…everything is so amazingly important and everything has been given to us to use to the glory of God. Even if it’s a subject that we don’t understand or don’t connect with, we cannot deny its inherent importance as a part of the Earth God created. For example, everyone loves to hate math. But math is so beautiful. Math is the language of the universe, and just another way that all of creation can shout to us that God is above all. Who could make a system such as this that describes every natural phenomenon? Only God Himself could ever be that creative and understand that complexity of design. We are slowly figuring it out, but there is still so much we have to learn in the sphere of mathematics and physics. I think that’s beautiful. 

Also, each student has to give a short devotion before class, and I gave mine. I’ll paste roughly what I said here:

Today I want to share about a topic that Terry mentioned briefly last week, that God has been speaking about to me ever since: the difference between conviction and condemnation. Conviction is the work of the Holy Spirit, where He points out an area of your life that isn't going so well, and He says, "Hey, this could be better. Let's make a change and move on so we can do something cooler!" but condemnation is something that comes from Satan and sometimes ourselves, when we think, "Wow, I'm really failing in this area of my life. I'm never going to get this right. I can't change. I suck." Sometimes, when the Holy Spirit is trying to convict us of something, we take it as condemnation for ourselves. We self-condemn, and we feel like we can't change and we'll never be good enough. This can cause a lot of problems.
In John 3:17-18a, God says, "For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him. Whoever believes in Him is not condemned." Because of Christ's perfect love for us, which was Him dying for us and sacrificing Himself for us to give us grace, we don't have to have fear. We don't have to fear failure. We don't have to fear not being good enough or not measuring up, because of 1st John 4:18. Because of perfect love; God's perfect love in giving up His Son as a sacrifice for us and Christ's perfect love for us in dying for us even though He knew before He went up on the cross how often we would fail, and how much we would screw up. He knew all the awful, terrible things we would do, even after we gave our lives to Him. That is perfect love. That is the love that casts out fear. It casts out the fear that we have failed again and we can never change.
So then, the question is, what if we lived that way? What if we actually lived like there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1), and like all our past, present, and future sins were already paid for, and our condemnation, which we so truly deserve, has been taken from us? What would our lives look like?
I believe we would be much bolder. We would live truly led by the Spirit, because the fear of failure and inadequacy was nailed to a cross for us 2,000 years ago. Because Christ's perfect love for us covers all that. It makes it irrelevant. Because we are inadequate, but God covers that too.
I want to close with this: before Jesus went up on the cross, He knew we would fail today. And He died for us anyway, because He loves us that much. And I challenge us all to think about that, about the perfect love of Christ that nothing can separate us from. Not our sins. Not our failures. Not trouble, hardship, or persecution. Not famine or nakedness or danger or sword. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. And I think it's time we start living like we believe that.

And lastly, during discussion after the videos, I realized how much I’d truly changed here. I was sharing my opinion about politics and history in a group setting. I was talking easily about what I thought and felt and believed, with no anxiety at all. God is so good in showing me who He has made me to be and how to become that person.

Thursday

On Thursday we mostly learned about some other religions; we studied cults and freemasonry, which are really freaking weird and I never even knew. I think it’s really important to be informed about the other religions in the world, because through that I think God can use us more effectively in winning those people to Christ.

Friday

The main event of Friday was a Tichu (the incredible German card game that has taken over YWAM Antigua) tournament. We all randomly got a partner, and then were paired up for games. It was incredibly intense. Sadly, this tournament was never completed. We’ll just pretend that Ashley and I won.

Saturday

Saturday was wonderfully busy. I got up really early to help Kalissa make quiche for breakfast, and then she and I went to the grocery store to pick up some things, because on Saturday we celebrated Thanksgiving! After breakfast, at which Tom was joking around and calling me “the enemy” due to the aforementioned Tichu tournament, I spent most of the rest of the day trying to prank him, by doing things such as hanging his shoes from the roof and hacking into his Facebook to change his language settings to Pirate and his picture to a silly one of him I had on my computer. The funniest part was the Pirate language, because he could tell it was English but still couldn’t understand it. (Tom is the German, so English is his second language.) After dinner, we made peace and hung out for most of the rest of the evening. It was a really good day.

Sunday

No surviving journal entry for Sunday, but we can probably assume that it was exactly like every other Sunday I’ve blogged about here.