Day 17, Budapest

That previous post is really from the first week, I just moved it from another blog. The team is gelling together really well. Its amazing all of the different talents and gifts God has brought together to make up this team.

The title of the second week was "The Exchanged Life" taught by Hal and Brenda Young.

They started off with establishing God's greatest purpose for His children. This was a great lesson to go over after spending a week talking about God's glory. Common answers we had were: To serve Him, to obey Him, to love Him, and to glorify Him.... all great answers.

In all of those answers, there can be something that hinders those purposes, and thats our flesh.

The flesh hinders the expression of Christ's Life through us.

We spent the week looking at what God says about our flesh, and also what He says about grace. To prepare us for evangelism, we were also taught the false "Traditional Religious View" of the flesh and the whole "I'm saved by grace, but still evil" and "As I follow Jesus I get better" ideas.

On the grace subject Hal started with teaching us about sin. He used a few points to contrast how we WERE, and who we ARE now.

Since we were all in Adam, when he:

1. Sinned, we sinned. "Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the
world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned" (Romans 5:12b)

2. Died spiritually, we died spiritually and were left to our own resources "But the free gift is not like the offense. For if by the one man's offense many died, much more the grace of God an the gift by the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ abounds to many." (Romans 5:15)

3. Was condemned, we were condemned "Therefore, as through one man's offense judgement came to all men, resulting in condemnation, even so through one Man's righteous act the free gift came to all men, resulting in justification of life" (Romans 5:18)

4. Became a sinner, we became sinners "For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so also by one Man's obedience many will be made righteous" (Romans 5:19)

That was when we were IN Adam. Now we are in Christ, and something took place....

"For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive" (1 Corinthians 15:22)

At salvation, God took us spiritually out of Adam and placed us into Christ. We participated literally in Christ's death, burial, resurrection, ascension and seating at the right hand of the Father. Our "old self" (old man) was out unregenerate human spirit, and now we have a choice. We can live in our strength, or we can give up on our fleshly efforts and allow Christ to live through us.

What an amazing concept to finally get down. There is a differance between being saved from my sin, and being saved from my self/flesh. I couldn't possibly cram everything I have learned last week in this blog, so I wont try.

I am finally getting used to the city. There are so many buses, trams, and metros flying around to different places in the city, it can get confusing. I feel like such a tourist at times. I'll see this amazingly beautiful building with all kinds of stonework and art and think, "Man! That must be an important building! What is that!?" only to find out its just apartments or something like that.

One thing that really stands out to us is the oppression that blankets the land here. I dont think i have seen a single Hungarian smile in the city. They seem to have a bitterness, a coldness binding them. I am told it is from the communist wars that constantly held them in bondage. The spirit of oppression is something that is tugging at my heart. If anything I want God to use us to bring light back into their lives. They dont even understand the hungarian word for "Hope"....if you ask them if they have hope, they say yes....but then when you say "Oh, so you believe things will get better?" they always say "OH! No! Things will never change around here" Im interested to see how God will use us to bring hope back to Budapest.

Well, this post is getting pretty long, so I'll cut it off for now. Hopefully I can post soon about how things are progressing with the outreach part of the school.

I love you guys and I am praying for you. Thank you so much for your help in sending me to these people, they need to know the love of God so bad. Its a long battle, and we are just getting started, so keep praying.