Retreating in the Lord

Now that two weeks have passed, it's past time to share about my experience at a women's retreat on October 3&4.

The retreat was sponsored by the Baptist Convention of Iowa (our church affiliation) and held at Hidden Acres Christian Camp in Dayton, Iowa. If you have never heard of these organizations take a second and look them up. Pretty cool stuff!

I went with 3 other ladies from church and we enjoyed a 3 hour van ride together in a brand new van (Thanks, Debbie!) before diving into a time of group fellowship, worship, and learning.

Since our maps were wrong about trip duration we missed participating in a service project, but made it in time for supper.

 The speaker for the weekend was Becky Linn from Follow Hard Ministries. Don't worry if you're like me and have never heard or her or the organization before. You can check them out here if you wish. She opened our time with prayer, worship songs, and a message on “How Sweet HE is.” What a wonderful time it was! How often do we really take time to think about how wonderful our Lord is?

We focused on:

• Determining My Delight: From the Psalms, we need to enjoy intimacy with Christ and desire nothing more than Him. God wants to know us and when we delight in the Lord his desires become our desires.
• A time of reflection or “Selah" where we could answer personal questions.

• Deepening My Desire for the Lord:

o    “God delights in me”

o   Come before God confidently

o   Draw near with a sincere heart

o   Read and Meditate on God’s word

We were divided into small groups where could share stories and encourage each other in the Word. This was a great opportunity to meet other ladies and hear stories of God's work in their lives.

Friday night free time was spent playing Rummikub, eating snacks, swimming, hot tubbing, fellowship and enjoying time to ourselves! It was nice to not have to worry about giving baths or getting littles to bed on time.

Saturday morning came too soon (maybe that had a little to do with the 1 AM hot tub time). Breakfast was filling and I was ready to be filled with God. We, once again, started our corporate time with prayer and singing. The focus of Saturday's sessions were "How Sweet It Is."

 

• Enjoying God’s Presence- Prayer focused, Matthew 7:7 God says, “ask and it shall be given to you, seek and you shall find, knock and the door shall be opened to you.”

• Why Pray: many reasons all over the Bible but most importantly “Prayer is the most I can do.”  When you say, "I'll pray for you" do you follow through?

 Using Matthew 7:7 as a guide, we studied more about different types of prayer.

1. Asking prayer- “In Jesus name” keeps us connected to the Lord.

2. Seeking prayer- listening to God’s voice: specific, encouraging, never contradicts

                -vs. listening to Satan: vague, confuses, contradicts

                -journaling is so important! It's a great way to look back and realize how our prayers are answered. Helps us not forget to pray for necessary things.  

                -understanding how God speaks to us: Bible, Holy Spirit, Godly counsel

3. Knocking prayer- “are you a lineman or a spectator?”

                - God ALWAYS takes the route that will bring Him the greatest glory

 We had an extended Selah and I enjoyed having a directed time looking up scripture and just thanking God for his many qualities.

 

After our final small group time, we were pretty much done for the day. Lunch was great (mostly because I didn't have to cook it or wash the dishes after!) and we enjoyed not having to hurry. Two of the ladies decided they would be brave and fly through the air at 30 feet above ground. Crazy! I watched from the ground when they both took their turns on the zip line. It was fun to watch from a safe distance :)

 

Overall, I had a refreshing weekend away being filled and renewed with the Holy Spirit.