Romans... the Truths Never End!

A fully colour-coded Romans - A book brought to life

"For I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith; as it is written, 'The one who is righteous will live by faith'"

-Key verse for Romans: 1:16-17

ROMANS... a book that clearly and simply spells out the gospel and our means of salvation. Although this may be true in some senses (the clarity more than simplicity), I definitely did not feel like this was the case this past week! The amount of detail Paul goes into to describe each aspect is amazing, but most of the time it was like "information overload," but in the best possible way! With so much good stuff to learn, I felt like I couldn't absorb and process fast enough and it was definitely a week of teaching that I didn't want to miss a detail of!!:) I was very impressed with the way Tom broke down and explained the reasons WHY Paul addresses so many specific topics in such detail (answer being because Paul was directly answering questions that were relevant to both the Jews and Gentiles in the church). 

To help me with processing everything throughout the week, I wrote out a lot of the timeless truths (revelations/ things that are always true about God,etc) that I was discovering on an A3 sheet of paper.

My Final Application

Endless truths, for you and me

In case you can't read it clearly, some of the main ones are:

-There is nothing I can do to earn or deserve God's salvation - it is a gift of grace
-God loves me AND likes me, and thats never going to change!
-There can never be true unity if we don't view each other as equals (in any context)
-When God sees me, he sees the infinite righteousness that was deposited there through faith in Jesus, not all my yucky sins
-Told to live out in love, not to earn or keep one’s salvation, but as an out flowing of one’s heart because of their salvation. God is love - love is the fulfillment of the law.

I could honestly go on forever with listing truths I am taking away from this week!
On a personal note, Romans has given me more understanding of God's heart of overflowing love for me (even though I'm still anything but perfect) and has really strengthen my security in his opinion of me :)

There is so much more I wish to share, but this week is hard to put into words.

 I know this hardly does it justice,but if you walk away with anything, know this: God has much he wants to reveal to each of us through this book. I am glad we took the time to study it on the BCC and I hope you feel encouraged to do the same!

Be blessed!

Things to do during a cyclone..

Hey everyone,

So as you already know, I experienced one of the worst natural disasters to hit Australia in over a century (and thats saying a lot), but we all came out safe and sound. With minor damage to infrastructure in my area, the main priority has been re-landscaping.

I feel very blessed to be apart of YWAM, for they have an excellent emergency plan and they executed it perfectly. We had plenty of water and food, plus they made sure everyone was in the most safest place possible for when we "locked down."

I'll just give you a quick summary of what happened:
We had warning of the cyclone possibility for over a week in advance, but it wasn't until Wednesday morning (Feb 2) that the reality that it was a certainty set in.
Everyone had jobs/ houses divided up so we could make sure all areas were completely secure.
During that time my flatmates and I cleared off our entire deck. The plants moved inside, along with 2 BBQs and all our patio furniture.
During Wednesday morning I moved locations 3 times as the conditions worsened and my flat became included in the "red zone" which meant subject to being flooded.
In the end, my flatmates and I all moved into our base director's house (Ken and Robyns), which was a BIG blessing as their house is only a few years old and was actually built cyclone proof (unlike mine that has cracks all over and could easily fall apart)

After lunch when everything was secure, we all headed off to our perspective lodgings and waited for the storm to hit. It wasn't until late afternoon that the wind really picked up, and the power lasted until 10pm. The eye of the cyclone crossed the coast about 2hours north of us at midnight. Although the storm was a category 5, the strength of the wind/ storm that hit us in Townsville was a category 3. During the afternoon while we waited, I decided to be productive and smash out 5 hours of homework (since there wasn't much else to do anyways lol). Once the power went off, I went to bed and actually slept right through the storm until 9 the next morning!! (Not bad - 11hr sleep and I actually only woke up the next day because I got shot with a nerf gun).
Thursday afternoon, we got the OK to leave our houses and so we went to survey the damage. To my pleasant surprise, my house survived and was in great condition minus 2 big trees that just missed the house. (The pics are on facebook if you haven't seen them already). Also, no structural damage happened to any of the other YWAM properties (only a bit of water leakage)
The power stayed off until late Friday morning, so during the time without power, here is some of the stuff that I did:

Made up a Bible Study lesson

Did LOTS of homework

Made cards :)

Hung out with Karly

Relaxed

Listened to Fiona playing live music

So that is the end of my cyclone adventure. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you so much for your prayers. We really appreciated them and honestly, you can see the impact they had as so many things should have been destroyed and somehow they were just missed by trees, etc. Absolute miracles everywhere.

All my love,
Liz