Please come and bring your friends & family! 

Link to Facebook Event: http://www.facebook.com/events/260447714026696/

• John 15:18-16:4
• Luke 12:29-31
• Luke 12:51-53
• Luke 16:8
• John 3:19
• John 14:17
• John 16:33
• John 18:36
• Romans 12:2
• 1 Corinthians 2:12
• 2 Corinthians 6:14-17
• 1 Corinthians 10:3-4
• Colossians 2:8
• Colossians 2:20
• James 1:27
• James 4:4
• 1 Peter 1:1
• 1 John 2:15-17
• 1 John 3:13
• 1 John 4:4-5
• 1 John 5:19
• Jude 21-23
• John 17:1-26

We visited the VTC (Vocational Training Centre) for a few days and got to build a relationship with the ladies there. These ladies all came from terrible backgrounds, where some used to be used as slaves, but with the help of International Needs, they were freed and sent to the VTC. These are amazing ladies and they blessed us with doing our hair and also making some African outfits for us. As well they all had the most amazing personalities and it was great to get to know those that we interacted with.

We also sat in and participated in a ceremony in a shrine and spoke to the shrine priest there through a translator. The slave girls from this shrine were liberated with the help of International Needs and so it was interesting to hear how the liberation affected him and how he and his family are coping now. There is a lot of spiritual warfare going on in places like these in Ghana and they still need a lot of prayer. We also went to see a fishing village and it broke our hearts to see a little boy there who did not know where his parents live and stayed around and helped with the fishing as the fishermen sometimes would feed him for his help. He had no other way to get food and stay alive. It was very sad to see and it just shows how incredibly blessed we are in Canada.

God was really teaching me how much we have here and how much stuff we have in Canada that really distracts us from our relationship with God. In Ghana, their lives seem so much simpler and we could see just how on fire for God they are. People think that they want the things that we have here, but I really don’t think that they do want what we have. Their church services were incredible. There is so much dancing and so much giving to the church. It was awesome. I can’t wait to go back there and experience it all again.

God’s judgement isn’t avoided by ignorance.

Some people assumed that you would be excused from God’s judgement if you weren’t given the law.  Since the law was given to Jews, and not Gentiles originally, does that mean that the Gentiles sins would be excused because they simply didn’t know?  Romans 2:14 addresses this:

Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law.

Essentially, Jew or Gentile, there are no exceptions to God’s judgement.  Everyone has the law written on their hearts whether they believe in God or not.  In Mere Christianity C.S. Lewis points out:

Every one has heard people quarrelling [...] They say things like this: ‘How’d you like it if anyone did the same to you?’ – ‘That’s my seat, I was there first’ – ‘Leave him alone, he isn’t doing you any harm’ – ‘Why should you shove in first?’ – ‘Give me a bit of your orange, I gave you a bit of mine’ – ‘Come on, you promised.’ People say things like that every day, educated people as well as uneducated, and children as well as grown-ups.  Now what interests me about all these remarks is that the man who makes them is not merely saying that the other man’s behaviour does not happen to please him. He is appealing to some kind of standard of behaviour which he expects the other man to know about. And the other man very seldom replies: ‘To hell with your standard.’ Nearly always he tries to make out that what he has been doing does not really go against the standard, or that if it does there is some special excuse [...] It looks, in fact, very much as if both parties had in mind some kind of Law or Rule of fair play or decent behaviour or morality or whatever you like to call it, about which they really agreed.

Even our Canadian government doesn’t accept ignorance as an excuse.  In Section 19 of our Criminal Code it prohibits “ignorance of the law” to be used as a defense.

God’s judgement isn’t nullified by our heritage.

Despite what some may think, growing up in a Christian home does not make you a Christian.  Mere knowledge of the law is not enough.  Romans 2:21-23 addresses people who know what is right but still don’t practice it.  People who “talk the talk but don’t walk the walk”.

You, then, who teach others, do you not teach yourself? You who preach against stealing, do you steal?  You who say that people should not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples?  You who boast in the law, do you dishonor God by breaking the law?

Many Gentiles were turning their backs on God and cursing him because of hypocrites like this.  It would cause them to think “well, clearly he is not much of a god if his people don’t even follow his standards”.  Part of being saved is realizing that you are not perfect and that you need help.  Jesus calls for confession, not perfection.  Many people turn away from God because of “Christians” who mess up and don’t own up to their mistakes.  It is seldom that someone turns away because a Christian messes up but seeks repentance.

God’s judgement won’t be averted by our good works.

At some point, it was taught in Jewish culture that you couldn’t go to hell if you were circumcised.  This type of twisted truth could allow people to think that a particular ceremony or ritual was what saved them.  God, however, knows our hearts and is able to judge our true motives and actions, just as Psalms 139:1-4 describes:

You have searched me, LORD,
and you know me.
² You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from afar.
³ You discern my going out and my lying down;
you are familiar with all my ways.
⁴ Before a word is on my tongue
you, LORD, know it completely.