YWAM Maui week 11

I can't believe our last full week of lecture is already complete! One week from today I leave for Thailand! That's crazy! It felt like this time would never come, but it's starting to feel real. In some ways opening night feels like it was yesterday, but at the same time, becauseso much had happened in these three months, it feels like it's been years! This week, our last normal week, was Worldview! We were blessed to have Ben Cordy speak to us this week, and it was a great one!

A worldview is a set of presuppositions (assumptions which may be true, partially true, or entirely false) which we hold (consciously or subconsciously) about the basic make up of our world. In other worlds it's the lens through which we view the world and interpret reality. There are many types of worldviews, including Biblical, eastern, secular humanistic, ect. Your worldview dictates your decisions and the way you respond to situations, and in most cases people have a combination of several different worldviews, meaning that they are oftentimes acting in ways inconsistent with the worldview they claim to hold. Many Christians for instance will live in ways contrary to their claimed worldview when it comes to something such as sex before marriage, as the Bible is clear that sex is meant for only those who are married, and therefore to move outside of those bounds would be considered adultery. At the same time, secular humanists may live in a way contrary to their worldview when they care for the mentally handicapped, as they are placing value on human life just for being human beings that is consistent with the Biblical view of people valuable because they were made in the image of God, butis inconsistent with the idea that we all were formed by chance through natural selection and that the strong and capable are the ones who should survive.

This week was a challenging week, as most Christians just assume that they have the Biblical worldview, but as we quickly found out many of us do not. You do not naturally gain a Biblical worldview on most things, you have to study, to learn, to retrain your mind. If not, due to the nature of the western culture most of us live in, we will pick up a secular or atheistic view on many things. Ben was very clear this week that his plan was not to tell us what to think, but to make us think for ourselves. He wanted to challenge each of our presuppositions and ask us where they came from. "Because my family says" or "my denomination says" was not enough, we needed to dig into scripture and find out what the Bible says. So often we look to the Bible to support what we already think is true instead of letting the Bible tell us what's true, with no preconceived notions. In many ways it brought us back to the question asked of us week 4 "Will we accept Biblical truth even if we don't like or agree with it?" a challenging question indeed. With so many of us from so many different backgrounds, countries, and denominations, it was certainly an interesting room to be in as we discussed topics such as homosexuality, abortion, women teaching in church, how church should be run, birth control, how government should be run, work, what marriage should look like, ect. It was a challenging time about some very sensitive topics, but as Christians we need to know what we believe and why we believe it. In some things the Bible is very explicit while in others it is implicit, but ultimately it does speak to each issue. We hold the responsibility to not just passively accept what we have been taught, but to dig into the scriptures and find out what the truth is.Ultimately, we came to our conclusions. I won't tell you the conclusions we reached, because why should you believe me? I'm a twenty year old girl from a little town in California without even a college degree to give me credibility. I can't presume to be the voice of authority in your life, but I would like to be a voice of encouragement, pushing you to look for yourselves, examine your own ideas and where you got them. One day we will all stand before God, accountable for the lives we lived. I think we all want to be able to say we did everything we could, searched with our whole hearts and minds for Biblical answers, and lived according to them. Additionally, whenever I've done things God's way I always tend to have much better results. I guess as creator of the universe and everything in it, He has a few good ideas on how best to live :)

This week also consisted of our last community outreach, our last work duties, our last town run, and our last church service in America for the next three months! It's been a crazy week of little endings, and lots of preparation for all that's awaiting us! Our team to Bangladesh leaves on Thursday, team Indonesia (the best team), team undisclosed location (it's in Asia and it rhymes with Dina), and the SBFM team to the Philippines leave Sunday morning, and team Nepal leaves Sunday night.If you guys could be in prayer for this last week of evangelism training, outreach prep, and packing that would be wonderful, also for our teams as we begin to head out!

For those of you who hadn't heard I have now received all of my outreach funds! YAY! God is so faithful in His provision, thank you to each of you who supported me through finances as well as prayer. You have truly blessed me so much, may God bless you even more! Please continue to pray for me! Additionally, if you wanted to donate but didn't get a chance to, you can donate to someone on my teamwho hasn't yet received hisfunds by going to this link,

Click donate, then student fees, and enter the name Brian Kostenko! We are the fall DTS! Thank you all for your support and love during this time!

Team Indonesia (Obviously the best of all teams, check out our color cordination)

Team Undisclosed Location That Rhymes With Dina

Team Bangladesh

SBFM Team to the Philippines

Team Nepal