Nature and Character of God

Overall this week was great! We had some beautiful weather, took part in another love feast and had a really challenging and thought provoking speaker among other things. David Painting was the speaker of the week and He taught on the nature and character of God. There was so many good things covered in the week it would be impossible for me to touch on all of them so I'll just focus on one or two points that really stood out to me.

One powerful yet simple thing we did was to read 1 Corinthians 13. First, as a class we established and all readily agreed on the fact that God is love. Then we were directed to read 1 Corinthians 13 which by itself is a very powerful chapter in the Bible. However, then David pointed out that if God is love then all the different characteristics of love covered in Corinthians also applied to God. We then reread the chapter out loud and replaced the word 'love' with 'God'. It seemed like such a simple thing to do but it really did make everyone in the room stop and think for a moment and re-evaluate how we see God and who He is.

We also looked into the idea of choices and how God has given us freewill to make choices. This in itself speaks of God's nature of love. Even though He has the ability as an all-powerful God to take absolute control of our lives He allows us to make choices whether they be good or bad. Not only does He allow us to make our own choices but if we make the wrong choice or move away from God with our choices He is willing to forgive us of that and accept us back into His love with true grace.

There were so many other topics covered in the week and many of them were touched on and expanded everyday so it is hard to give a sense of the whole impact and meaning of the lectures in this one entry! The two points above really made me think and appreciate more and more who God is.

As mentioned before my DTS had another love feast in which we specifically set aside an evening to get together, eat, be a community and have God the focus of it all. It was a lot of fun and really encouraging overall. We all dressed up in the theme of togas and shared a lot of laughs together.

The week was also so bright and sunny that I had the chance to play a lot of frisbee outside on the oval. Most of the flowers are starting to come out and bloom now! Some of the trees are also budding which is very exciting. I leave for South Africa in less then a month now and am getting very exited for it!