Adventures in YWAM: Week 4: Nature and Character of God

This week went by so incredibly fast and today I am thankful for a day of rest and recuperation in preparation for another busy week. I love what I’m learning but it’s so hard to process it all since we have a new topic each week. However, there are many connections to be made between each week’s teachings and I have to trust that God will reveal His truths to me in His perfect timing.

This week we talked about the Nature and Character of God. Our speaker was from Argentina so he spoke in Spanish and it was translated to English. This was hard for me to get used to! In college, when classes were in Spanish, I took notes in Spanish. But this week I was hearing it in Spanish then writing the notes down in English. As the week went on, I started to get the hang of it and understood his Spanish more and more. It encouraged me to want to improve my Spanish. When you’re not around it, obviously you don’t speak it and it’s hard to maintain the language. I hope to have more opportunities in the future to speak it so I don’t lose it!

The speaker talked a lot about how the enemy tries to deceive us using the truth. Just as he used scripture to try and tempt Jesus (in Matt. 4:1-11), he uses truth to try and tempt us. This is why he is so sneaky and can deceive us without us even recognizing it. Because of Satan’s deceit, we may find ourselves doing the will of God, but not in God’s timing. And when it’s not in God’s timing, we fall into sin. The things we choose to do may not be sinful, but if the motivation of our hearts are not motivated by Christ’s love, we end up disobeying God. We must do the will of God and do it in His perfect timing. In order to avoid Satan’s deceit, we must know our God and live in the truths of His promises. When we know Him intimately, we love Him more and more, and we want to obey Him. This is our goal: to know Him, love Him, and obey Him.

After realizing the importance of really knowing God, we talked about his nature. Among other things, God is all-powerful (with Him all things are possible), always present (He is with us, we should not fear), and He is eternal (He is in our future, we can experience security). He tells us these things in His word so that we can learn to trust Him and obey Him. God loves us and wants the best for us so why wouldn’t we want to listen to His voice and obey what He tells us to do? If we live in this way, we will experience a full life, pleasing our God.

For me this week I was struck by God’s love for me. I’m realizing that this is not something I fully believe. We hear it all the time—that God loves you—but do we really, truly believe it and do we live our lives as a reflection of His love? This week has sparked in me a desire to know God more, so that I can fall more in love with Him, and live my life being compelled by His love and not compelled by the deception of the enemy.

Some cool things that stuck out to me from the speaker this week:

--Understanding the Trinity (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit), the triune nature of God. Often we have a hard time grasping God’s nature because we don’t have anything to associate Him with here on earth. Who do we know who is three in one? Who do we know who is eternal? No one…..but I thought this illustration was cool as a way to find association with the Trinity:

1 X 1 X 1 = 1 (The Trinity is three persons in one, each one is not a third of God, but fully God in three persons. Multiply the three whole parts together, and you get one whole part.)

1 X 1 X 0 = 0 (If one of the three in the Trinity was missing, the Trinity wouldn’t exist, God wouldn’t exist.)

--The name I was given (Darcy), chosen by my parents, is my name for all of eternity and is the name that God calls me. He loves us so much that He invites us to be a part of creation, allowing us to name the ones He’s created. (Thanks Mom and Dad for giving me my name!).

Last night, Friday, we had a “Love Feast” with our DTS. This was an opportunity to get dressed up and share in yummy dessert, awesome worship, communion, and giving thanks to God. I definitely felt the love :) We had each written letters of thanks to God and during worship, we read them out loud. It was awesome to give thanks to God in light of all He’s been teaching us this week about His amazing nature and character!