Week 2 - Intimacy with God

This weeks topic was Intimacy with God, our speaker was Aaron Walsh from Tauranga House of Prayer. On Justice Friday we had Denise Ritchie from Stop Demand talk about Human Trafficking. We also watched Human Trafficking (movie) on Thursday.

Aaron's lectures were pretty deep. He spends 4 hours in devotional time each morning. Obviously that is also kind of part of his job but I think the lectures really shined through this.

Aaron's key point was that you can't have authentic impact without authentic intimacy. Just like Jesus who constantly corresponded with the father throughout his ministry. It is important to keep a steady foundation into what God teaches us.

John the Baptist prepared 30 years for 6 months of ministry whereas Jesus for 3 years from 30 years preparation. He saw the needs around us; it just wasn’t his time to go yet. This really proves it is very important to spend time getting intimate with God because a short term ministry can still have a huge impact and doing what God wants is of vital importance because it can have a greater impact then what we could ever imagine.

The enemy doesn’t mind if we complete our mandate without intimacy with God. Have we rallied more people to a cause then to Jesus? If we get distracted by the big task of social justice we may lose our life with God. This is dire because our relationship with the creator of the universe is clearly far more important than a cause he is passionate about. It was interesting that Denise Ritchie our speaker on the Friday seemed to have fallen into this. She originally was very involved in YWAM but has strayed off and definitely didn't seem very church friendly.

The greatest hope for injustice is hastening the day of the lord, he makes everything right. This phrase was then followed by “Justice is what happens when Jesus makes all things that are wrong, right!” Sin will always be in this world and our only hope to end all injustice is when Jesus comes with the power he has to end it.

We need a vision from God to set restraints to say no to things that do not relate. Often there are worthy causes to get involved in but if we don’t have the mandate from God it is hard to say no. But if we have a clear mandate from God of what we have to do then it’s much easier to say no, to something worthwhile but not part of what God has called us to do.

Social justice that’s combined by humans but without God still leaves souls separated from God. We need to care for their immediate needs as well as their spiritual needs. Because if we look after them physically there won’t be any change in the direction of their lives. They will pursue the same things and end up in need again. If we look after them spiritually also they will hopefully change mindset and be able to support themselves better with the plans that Jesus makes for their lives.

Social justice can be a distraction away from God. Nothing is better than devotion to Jesus. It is very hard to ignore hurting, to do so to spend more time with God does seem somewhat barbaric. I personally think there needs to be a balance between the two. And often there is time spent not doing either that would be better spent spending time with Jesus or helping others.

Denise’s key point is that we focus too much on the supply end of the sex/prostitution industry. There needs to be more focus on removing the demand side because this is what drives the market. There is no supply without demand.

This is certainly a good approach to this problem. To often we focus on traffickers when the real offender is getting away without any consequence.