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.
