The nature and character of God

The nature and Character of God... what to say about this topic, one could write a whole book on it, a Bible even! Our speaker this week was Scott Freeman, he is an American but he and his family are currently working in Costa Rica with YWAM. Scott has been in YWAM since 1996 studying and working on more than 4 continents and for the past few years he has been running Children at risk schools.

I have heard this teaching a couple of times but it is something that you never quite grasp all of, who God is and how big he is and it is a topic that I think we all need to re-study or re-think every now and then. To be honest I didn’t really take many notes during class as it was much easier to just listen and let it sink in, so when I come to write my blog I don’t have notes to draw on. It is also very difficult to put into words the change in my concept of who God is.

I guess the thing I can say that will make the most sense is that I have a deeper understanding of how merciful God is. Looking through scripture it is soooo clear how often God forgives those who have committed terrible crimes. There are examples from the Old and New Testaments alike, e.g. Abraham, David (OT), the women caught in adultery and many other disciples of Jesus (NT), where God works through people who have messed up, some of them even messed up while they were followers of God! It was refreshing to look at this again and to gain that deeper understanding of God’s love and mercy.

We also talked about God’s character in relation to injustices in the world. This is a very big topic and quite tricky to navigate and again I think it is something that I will never fully grasp but will always be working on.

Local outreach

We are continuing with the children’s ministry in the red light district and as we get to know the kids better and build relationships we are seeing more of the real kids behind the masks. Even though my Spanish isn’t good at all I am getting to know the kids, a couple of boys in particular, and I am really enjoying that. I miss having kids around and this time on Monday’s is a great to time to play but also to instil Godly principles. I really hope this ministry will continue even when our school is over as these kids really need to be loved and hear how precious they are in God’s eyes. It will take quite a lot of time and energy to see these kids really develop a relationship with God but it is exciting to see small progress.