"After forty days Noah opened a window he had made in the ark and sent out a raven, and it kept flying back and forth until the water had dried up from the earth. Then he sent out a dove to see if the water had receded from the surface of the ground. But the dove could find nowhere to perch because there was water over all the surface of the earth; so it returned to Noah in the ark. He reached out his hand and took the dove and brought it back to himself in the ark. He waited seven more days and again sent out the dove from the ark. When the dove returned to him in the evening, there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf! Then Noah knew that the water had receded from the earth."~Genesis 8:6-11

Thursday, September 27, 2012

So... what now?

So during my experience of Discipleship Training School (DTS) in Taiwan and the Philippines, I was so inspired and in awe of all that I saw God doing in my life and in the lives of those around me.  I want to be able to communicate effectively about this God to anyone I may meet- the Thai people, Ugandans, St. Olaf students, a random stranger on a bus- whatever God has for me.  So I knew it would be a good idea to really understand my faith more fully and devote time to seeking after God- not guessing at who He is based off of what I see in the media, or what I hear from friends, but really digging into His Word and finding out for myself even more about this God who has already been so faithful to me.

Side note: One of the many things that I came to believe during DTS is that the Bible is not just a historical document, and it doesn't just have the truth somewhere in it, and it's not that some parts of it are true and other parts are not, but I believe that the whole Bible is true.

So God has led me to attend the School of Biblical Studies through Youth With a Mission (YWAM) at YWAM Turner Valley in Canada.

Here's the gist:

It's a nine month course during which we will read through each book of the Bible five times.
We are studying the Bible inductively- that means attempting to approach the text with no preconceived ideas.  Oftentimes people go to the Bible with an idea already in their head and only look to the Bible for scripture to back up that idea.  When you approach the Bible that way, you are not allowing it to speak for itself.

So, the basic method is this:
                OBSERVATION: Reading through the assigned book the whole way through in one sitting (we are beginning with the book Philemon- so we are reading the letter as letters are intended to be read- altogether) and calling attention to things that pop out- e.g. repeated words or themes, emphatic statements, contrasts, comparisons etc.
                HISTORICAL BACKGROUND: Looking in the assigned text first, then elsewhere in the Bible that may give hints as to what's going on in the time surrounding when the letter was written (Acts is a good resource for most of the epistles) and then consulting outside sources.
                INTERPRETATION: Essentially, putting together the two preceding steps and trying to figure out what the letter meant to the original reader.
                APPLICATION: Basically we ask, how can we apply that now?  And then we do.

I hope to give you all a little window into what we're learning about each book, so tomorrow we finish studying Philemon, and I will post about it for you, but I want to give you a quick teaser for what is to come.

These are some quotes I heard from my classmates today about Philemon (a book that is largely overlooked due to its brevity- you might even say it's disregarded by most Christians)...

"The depth of this book is amazing."
"Paul. Is a genius."

Honestly, we're studying this book for a whole week and I don't think it's enough time.  My mind is exploding with information from this book and I can't even begin to understand how Paul was able to communicate so much in a mere 25 verses.
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