Updates from Ed Ross

Today I spent most of the day with my girlfriend. It was a very nice day.

Today we carried on reading Acts in our quiet times. I finished the book today, so continued reading the second book I need to write a report on now that I've finished Blue Like Jazz. This second book is "Spiritual Warfare for every Christian" by Dean Sherman. So far, I'm liking it. The subject is given a very practical and down-to-earth view which reminds the Christian reader that they have authority and victory in Jesus.

We then resumed our Prayer For The Nations. Here we prayed again about the persecution of Christians in India.

We then continued our studies on The Bible, where we finished off the Old Testament, and started looking at the New Testament. The main point was that The Law was given through Moses, but Grace and Truth was given through Jesus. I liked what the teacher said about the gospels: they are more like a portrait than a photograph: they all feature the truth about Jesus, just from different angles. We had the finish off the teaching today, as our weekend is Friday and Saturday this week as we are going to a YWAM conference next week starting on Sunday. It would have been nice to have gone through all the New Testament books too, but there just wasn't time. We got the main point though: God loves you.

After Community Care I packed my bags for the conference and for going to Portsmouth later in the night for a stag party on Saturday (and to see my girlfriend). Then after tea I went to the first part of a final seminar on The Bible, where we started talking about a Acts (which is why we had been reading it this week). Then I left o get my things ready to go to Portsmouth.

The journey was very smooth, and involved meeting my parents (who gave me a lift to the station from Holmsted Manor), which was very nice.

Thanks for being a part of my journey through this YWAM DTS course.

This morning I read more of Acts in Quiet Time. Today it struck me how God had really set Paul up with everything he needed for his life telling people about Jesus: he knew the scriptures, so he could show other Jews how Jesus was the promised one from that; he was a Roman citizen, so he had certain rights that he wouldn't have done otherwise. He was the right man at the right time.

After that we continued with our study on The Bible, and looked at almost all the rest of the books of the Old Testament. The teacher has real books with the names of each of the books of the Bible written on them, and after he talks about each book, he places them on a table in chronological order. This is quite useful, as it shows which books are talking about the same moments in history. Reading the Old Testament could be a bit frustrating if you didn't know some books just repeate a lot of the same information! We also had an interesting discussion on why God said to destroy certain cities by force.

After lunch and Community Care, I helped set up the dining hall with speakers and a mixing desk for a concert held here tonight. It was fun (for me) to get to work with some musical cables. I like that type of thing! The cases the microphones came in reminded me of the type at my Portsmouth church, which was nice.

We had our next meeting about the India outreach after that. We spoke about unity, and prayed for each other. We also shared some pictures we thought God was giving us, and discussed them too.

After dinner I was asked if I wanted to be on the security/stewarding team for the concert, so I put on a few more layers of clothing, and went. I stayed outside for a couple of hours or so, directing cars towards the car park. Once no more cars were coming, the team stayed outside and talked about various things, such as the interesting things that have happened on the other team members' outreaches. It was an interesting, yet cold time.

I've been here almost 6 weeks now! This YWAM DTS course is fantastic.

Today we studied the first five books of the Bible, and took part in our cell groups.

The day started off, as ever, with our Quiet Time. Again, I read through more of the book of Acts. It is often said that although the name is often given as the Acts of the Apostles, it really is much more the Acts of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is in every page of the book, and in every encounter between believers and non-believers. He teaches, speaks, guides, instructs, heals, and does so much for so many in the book. A life live for God without the Holy Spirit is a bit like having a wind-up torch, but never having it wound up. You'd be missing out on so much.

After Quiet Time we met as a base to pray for the needs of a new YWAM base in Leeds, in the north of England. A couple who are wanting to start a base there came and explained the situation, and helped us pray for the main needs. It was quite good for me to be a part of this. I've known for a while that God has a plan for Leeds - a friend from university went up there after they graduated, and it seems some good work has been going on there.

Then we moved on to our next lecture on The Bible. We covered the first five books of the Bible - The Law. I certainly learned a lot today, and it was great to be a part of this lecture. The speaker certainly knows his stuff, and helps us all see more clearly what the Biblw is talking about. For example, when one of the laws is talking about not boiling baby animals in their mother's milk, instead of taking this to extremes and having separate meat and dairy sections of resteraunts, we should look at the context: there were other religions around at the time the law was given which suggested that cooking in this way would magically make more food appear. The prohibition was against the magical ideas. It was also good to see how Genesis was divided - four main events, then four main people people. Most importantly, it was emphasised that how we look at the law now should be based on what Jesus said: love God and love your neighbour as yourself: so many of the Old Testament laws would still stand, but others are not as meaningful when it comes to loving God or others. I'm looking forward to tomorrow's lecture to see what else we are taught.

As usual, after lunch (another nice curry), we took part in the standard Community Care activites, then I helped tidy our room in preparation for this evening's mens' small group. In small group we prayed for each other, talked about how we thought the ladies surprise evening went yesterday, and sung more worship to God.

It has been yet another good day. I'm so glad i'm here to learn in this lecture phase, and am interested to see what will happen on outreach to India! Thanks for reading. Feel free to add a comment to this or any other blog entry.

Today we started our study on The Bible, and held a surprise dinner for the girls on the course.

In Quiet Time I read as much of the book of Acts as possible, as we had been told the speaker this week wanted us to read the whole thing by Thursday. When read with an understanding that the same Holy Spirit which gave power to the followers of Jesus back then gives power to us now, it transforms the book. I'm looking forward to reading the rest of it again.

Then we had our usual Monday morning whole of base sung worship time, in which I really felt God in the room.

We then started our week's teaching on The Bible. We covered a bit about what The Bible is (a collection of 66 books written by people from various walks of life, from shepherds to Kings), and how we got that collection of books (in terms of the accuracy of the copies and the work that goes in to translating) as well as some other topics. It was another interesting start to the week's lectures. I think, again, that I'd studied a bit of what we covered before, but again, it is great to get it all in one consistent package. Some things that stood out to me: the word of God has been very accurately preserved for many, many years; you can't pin down the text to just one way of doing things - the text is inspired by God, so it moves with how God's breath moves - yet at the same time scripture is not changeable to suit the mood of the day.

After lunch, we all took part in the usual Community Care activities, and then we had a seminar on Bible Study, which I really enjoyed. We learned about two different basic types of Bible Study: Inductive and Deductive, and how Inductive study meant looking at the text till you see it clearly, interpreting it (seeing what it meant to the origional readers (and reader through the ages)), then applying it to our lives now. This was contrasted with Deductive Bible Study, where one goes to the Bible with a preconceived notion, and look for verses that support that idea. We saw that Inductive Bible Study was the best way to go out of the two. It was another very enjoyable seminar, lead by the base leader who spoke to us last week on Grace. It was good to have him back again. I really think what I learned here will be very useful for when I want to really study the Bible later on.

Once the seminar had finished, th guys went off to prepare a surprise dinner for the ladies, which I think they all enjoyed. It was good to get to serve them all in this way.

It has been another fun, but fast day here at Holmsted Manor on the YWAM DTS course. The lecture phase is already almost half done! Time is just going so quickly, but it is good to be so sure this is the right place for me at the moment. Have a great week! Please feel free to comment on this or any other blog entry.