Today we learned more about Grace. It was very, very good. We saw today that Grace is like a double edge sword. One the one edge there is the "undeserved favour/forgiveness of God", and on the other there is "God empowering presence in your life". This second meaning has been taught in my Portsmouth church a few times, so I was quite pleased to see it repeated here - knowing that it is a liberating message, and that Grace enables us to be free to live the life God wants for us. God's grace means we can not easily loose our salvation, and God's grace means we can freely do the things He wants us to. We also saw again how there are no works required for our salvation. Good works are a sign of our salvation, not a requirement to be saved (made right with God).

A funny thing happened near the start of the teaching today: the teacher said that he would be teaching based on what he had read in a book by a particular preacher. I looked at the name of the preacher, and realised I'd seen it before. A few months before finding out about the DTS course, I'd been to a youth-work conference, where the speaker had:
  • Made me realise that doing something like a DTS (before I even knew about the DTS course) could be a good idea
  • Recommended to me personally several podcasts to listen to, including the sermons of the preacher our talk was based on today!
From this, I am realising how my life is all living in the grace of God: He has been preparing me for this course for quite some time, without me even knowing it! He got me to a conference to hear someone help me think this could be a good idea, then he helped me hear teaching that has helped me in the lectures now that I'm here. In myself, I could have not done any of this. It was just Him, and His love for me.

There were also the usual daily activities, and an odd time when I ended up reading a magazine for brides.

It was another great day. I'm discovering that every aspect of life here on the Holmsted Manor YWAM DTS course is worth the fees in themselves, but we get all of them: the great teaching, the community, the leadership, the great scenery. It's all here!