The Father Heart of God

Week seven is now officially over and it's getting closer and closer to the end of lectures and the beginning of the outreach phase. My outreach to team to South Africa has decided that the three locations within South Africa that we will be going to are Durban, Worcester and Cape Town. We will be spending six weeks total in South Africa and then we will come back to the United Kingdom for another three weeks of outreach. The location of our UK outreach is still undetermined and we are currently looking into that. We've booked our flights for South Africa and we leave on April 6 which is exactly a month from now! I'm very excited to go but it will also be sad to split up from the rest of the DTS as they will be going to Tanzania.

This week's lectures were taught by Emmanuel on the Father heart of God. The first few days we spent in looking at the character and nature of God so that we established a foundation of who God. We looked at how the nature of God (who He is) and the character of God (what He does) is relevant to all generations and all cultures. God remains the same but He is relational and knowable for everyone and we can all seek after Him and know Him. God created us to be creative, stewards (of the world and our own belongings) and to serve (by having a selfless commitment to others). We first need to be able to understand the Father to begin serving with His same heart. A major hindrance to our knowing God's hear better is our pride because pride can lead to many different barriers such as insecurity, independence and jealousy.

We then looked specifically at at the fatherhood of God and how it is this aspect of His character that allows Him to demonstrate warmth, nurturing and security based on His unconditional love. The role of our earthly father greatly influences our opinions and thoughts towards our heavenly father. By looking deeply into His character we can see how our views are false and need to be changed. The reason for the warmth of God's character is acceptance and unconditional mercy and grace. God's nurturing is for our maturing through discipline, teaching and guidance. Finally, God's security is so that we may have safety in identity, protection and through our rights and inheritance.

This week I also had the opportunity to go to a gig here on the base which featured a band called Evergreen who work through YWAM; their goal is to evangelize through the method of music to other musicians. It was a lot of fun and a nice end to the week! Thanks for reading!