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The Quiet Time today was led by one of the DTS leaders. He showed us a video of a drama performed at a church, which starts with a girl enjoying life with Jesus. Suddenly distractions-a boyfriend, addictions, self harm (all represented by other actors) - come in and start to destroy the girl's life. All the time, Jesus is trying to get to the girl - fighting to get her back again. Just because the girl was caught in the distractions and addictions, it didn't mean Jesus wanted to leave her, or love her any less. In the end, Jesus breaks past the crowd, and wins back the girl, defeating the enemy. It was quite good to watch and think about.
We had our usual Tuesday morning base prayer session next, where we prayed for the leaders of the base.
Today's lecture topic was "The nature and Character of God". If we are to be able to look at other aspects of spiritual warfare, we must first recognise the awesome nature of God. We saw how God is relevant: at all times, in all generations, in every context, in every culture, and in every change.
Even though there are changes in life, God is still relevant, and they are not a surprise to Him. We as the church should not get stuck in our ways, as God is relevant to the current culture, so should we. I now think back to something in Blue Like Jazz about a relevant church: it needs to preach the gospel, else it is not going to be relevant.
We also looked at God's origional intention, as shown in Genesis 1:27-28:
'So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth."'
It is all about relationships. God wants a relationship with us. That is why we have free will, so that we can choose to accept Him or not.
Getting rid of the Greek teaching was also talked about. The distinction between 'sacred' and 'secular' things should be done away with - God made everything, so there is no distinction.
Another important part of the class was on leadership. God wants us to rule, as shown in the verse, and that takes Selfless Service. If we look at leaders that just want the best for themselves, we think of them as dictators or tyrants. Jesus modeled a different type of leadership: He gave everything He could for His followers. He washed his disciples feet - th job of the lowest of the low servants, and He went to the cross to make a way back to God the Father. He walked in humility and had victory over the enemy.
We also looked at another verse that has come up quite a lot during the YWAM DTS course, John 10:10:
"The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly."
Jesus came to give us the most amazing life we could imagine. He didn't promise it would be the easiest or most trouble free life (in fact, he said pretty much the opposite), but it is the life we are all called to - the life we were made for.
After lunch and Community Care, we had free time. Then in the evening we had small group. Today we got to watch a film, and we chose 'The Island', which reminded me a bit of the video we saw this morning.
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"Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright ©2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved."
